Studies on Pervaporation for Recovery of Natural Aroma Compound

Aroma compounds are widely used as additives in many products (food, pharmacy and cosmetics). Most industries applied extraction and distillation to recover aroma compounds from natural sources; however, both suffer from disadvantages (product contamination and energy consumption). Pervaporation (PV), a membrane separation process, is considered as a promising technique to overcome above challenges. This book contains both experimental and parametric studies dealing with the application of PV for aroma compound recovery from aqueous solutions using poly (ether-block-amide) (PEBA) membranes. The effect of process conditions on PV performance (permeation flux and selectivity) were investigated. The solubility and diffusivity of the aroma compounds in PEBA membrane were evaluated. A modified PV process was studied parametrically. In conclusion, PEBA membrane was found selective for aroma-water separation, the molecular interactions between permeant-permeant and permeant-membrane had significant role affecting the mass transfer behavior of permeant across the membrane, and the modified PV process could improve the aroma compound recovery.