Membrane-based solvent extraction of aroma compounds: Choice of configurations of hollow fiber modules based on experiments and simulation

This work focuses on the extraction of aroma compounds by hexane in a commercial hollow fiber module. Experiments and simulations have been carried out to establish relationships between the physicochemical properties of aroma compounds and mass transport properties reached with the membrane module. The aroma compounds which have been investigated are 2-phenylethanol (PE), benzaldehyde (BA), ethyl butyrate (EB) and dimethyltrisulfide (DMTS). These four compounds have been chosen because they present a great range of partition coefficient values between water and hexane. The parameters of the process studied were the position of the feed: inside or outside the fibers and the nature of the commercial module X-30 or X-40 module by Liquicel®. A resistance in series model has been successfully developed to describe the mass transfer in such a system. Simulations and experiments show that the best configuration for the extraction is when the feed flows inside the shell with the X-30 module.