OPERATION STRATEGIES FOR REVERSE-OSMOSIS MEMBRANE FOULING IN THE DAIRY INDUSTRY

The relevance of optimal operation strategies for food processes and particularly for membrane fouling control is demonstrated for reverse-osmosis of cheese whey. For estimating optimal operation strategies dynamic optimization is applied using a process model for membrane fouling and an objective function based on cash-flows. An analysis of the consequences for variations in membrane fouling showed that trajectory control of state variables is well suited for the realization of reliable operation results. Although the application of optimal trajectories of the operation variables yields significant improvement of cash-flows (up to 28%), the consequences of additional investments have to be evaluated in terms of profitability. As indicated, for relatively high additional investments the application of suboptimal operation strategies is meaningful.