The influence of process parameters on aroma recovery by hydrophobic pervaporation

Hydrophobic pervaporation has been shown to be a promising, alternative process for the recovery of volatile organic components from their aqueous solutions, such as the recovery of aroma compounds in the food industry. Until now most of the research on the influence of operating parameters on aroma recovery by pervaporation has been conducted on the laboratory scale. The number of studies dealing with the scaling-up of the pervaporation process for the separation of multi-component mixtures is still relatively small, and usually has a number of limitations. The aim of this study was to investigate module design aspects of pervaporation, using a modified version of an existing pervaporation simulation tool for aroma recovery. By applying the simulation to four aroma compounds, two alcohols and two esters, the influence of major process and module design parameters on the performance of a single module has been investigated. The results of the simulation show that detailed modelling of single module behaviour is an important aspect of the optimisation of pervaporation plant performance.