The Role of Nanofiltration Membrane Technology in Dairy Production

What are the functions of nanofiltration membrane technology in dairy production?

In the production process of dairy products, including the extraction and processing of raw materials, active protection and nutrition enhancement, packaging and storage, and other processes. In order to better realize the value of the products, we began to use membrane technology for concentration in the process of raw material extraction and processing, which can not only reduce the sterilization intensity before fermentation but also reduce the use of food additives.

As a filtration and concentration technology, nanofiltration membrane technology has the performance advantage of selectively removing deionization, which lies between ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis. In the food industry, nanofiltration membrane technology can achieve separation, purification, decolorization, and concentration. Therefore, in the dairy industry, it has been maturely used for the concentration of desalted whey and concentration before drying milk powder.

Moreover, the nanofiltration membrane technology has a high lactose retention rate. We can also use nanofiltration membrane to concentrate raw milk, which aims to increase the protein, fat, and solid concentration in milk without using thickeners to stabilize the structure of milk quality, as well as reduce the influence of heat treatment on protein in the production process, thus affecting the production quality of dairy products.

How does nanofiltration membrane technology help dairy products maintain "nutritional" components?

Nowadays, people pay more and more attention to the development of the beverage industry, including the important development industry of dairy products. After continuous development and utilization, we found that in the production of dairy products, the traditional concentration process, i.e., evaporation concentration technology, such as triple-effect (four-effect) evaporator, centrifugal evaporator, etc., although has the advantages of high evaporation efficiency, still has certain disadvantages, such as destroying the product's aroma or original taste under high-temperature conditions and damaging the nutritional components in the product.

Therefore, in order to ensure the original flavor and taste of dairy products, we began to use membrane technology with high separation efficiency. This membrane technology is a new separation technology, mainly applied in work such as separation, concentration, purification, and refining, with the performance advantages of high efficiency, energy-saving, environmental protection, molecular-level filtration, and simple filtration process and easy to control.

One of the more commonly used membrane technologies is nanofiltration membrane technology, which has been widely used in food, medicine, biology, water treatment, electronics, and other industries and is very applicable to separation and extraction processes of dairy products. Also, the application of nanofiltration membrane technology in the field of separation and purification has great benefits for enterprises and environmental protection, and has become one of the important means of separation science.