Drastic energy consumption reduction and ecoefficiency improvement of cranberry juice deacidification by electrodialysis with bipolar membranes at semi-industrial scale: Reuse of the recovery solution

Electrodialysis with bipolar membranes (EDBM) is an emerging technology to produce deacidified cranberry juice. It also allows consumers to benefit from the health effects of cranberry without its high content in organic acids that can lead to unpleasant taste and possible side effects. Electrodialysis (ED) is an ecofriendly technology since it uses electricity, which can be obtained from renewable sources and no hazardous chemicals. Until now, deacidification treatments of cranberry juice were only performed on laboratory scale ED cells. The aim of the present work was to test the process on a semi-industrial ED cell and to optimize it by reusing the organic acid recovery solution. Deacidification of cranberry juice was carried out in batch mode for a total of 95 h and the reuse of the recovery solution had no effect on the deacidified juice physicochemical characteristics. Moreover, reusing the recovery solution leads to an increase of its acid content and energy savings up to 42.9% after 3 reuses. Furthermore, by reusing the recovery solution, effluents generated by the process would be limited. Therefore, the scale-up of cranberry juice deacidification process by EDBM was successful and its transfer to the industry is the next step.