Comparative analysis of nutritional composition and droplet size of coconut milk due to dilution and emulsification

The high-fat content of coconut milk leads to instability of the emulsion and becomes the major limitation for its application in the food and beverage industries. It is also high in calories, which becomes a major debate among the consumers. Dilution and emulsification are important processes that are used to reduce the effect of high fat during the preservation process. In this study, water, sodium caseinate, and maltodextrin were added to the coconut milk. A sonicator and a high-shear homogenizer were used to homogenize the droplet. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of dilution and emulsification on the nutritional quality and stability of the emulsion. The nutritional composition was determined using proximate analysis. The stability of the emulsion was determined based on the properties of the droplets via particle size and microscopic analyses. The dilution process reduced the fat content; however, the addition of additives altered the nutritional quality of the emulsion, especially protein and carbohydrate content. It was also found that the emulsification process improves the particle size of the droplet as it creates a uniform size of the droplet and reduces the primary particle size to less than 6 μm. However, only the sonicated coconut milk has high stability with a creaming index of 0%

Dynamic anaerobic membrane bioreactor (DAnMBR) with phase separation for food processing wastewater treatment at mesophilic temperature: Characterization of cake layer

The treatment of high-strength wastewater using an anaerobic digester coupled with a dynamic membrane has gained significant interest of late due to its small footprint and low cost of supporting material for the membrane. Dynamic membrane fundamentally performs similarly to the conventional membranes by the cake layer deposited onto the supporting material with eventual fouling stage. The filtration performance is proportionally related to the cake layer development. Thus, the objective of this study is to characterize the cake layer affecting the filtration performance. A two-phase anaerobic digester with submerged 20-µm woven filter cloth as the supporting membrane (DAnMBR) was used in this study to treat food-processing wastewater. The organic loading rate of 5.0 g COD/L.day was fed into the DAnMBR, and the cake layer samples were taken at 14 days intervals until fouling occurred. The performance of the wastewater treatment and characteristics of the cake layer and bulk sludge were analyzed. It took a total of 35 days for the dynamic membrane to foul with a final flux of 2.5 L/m2·h and transmembrane pressure of 0.7 bar. The protein ratio to polysaccharide (PN/PS) of the extracellular polymeric substances increased significantly compared to soluble microbial product PN/PS ratio; thus, it is the main contributor to the membrane fouling. The thickness of the cake layer increased slightly from day 14 to 28 but sharply at the fouled stage (day 35), agreeing with the treatment performance. The concentrations of COD, BOD5, ammoniacal nitrogen, oil and grease, total suspended solids, and turbidity followed closely the inverse proportional trend of cake layer development. The size of the foulants that made up the cake layer resulted in micropore size dynamic membrane emanating the treatment performance of the DAnMBR is comparable to the conventional microfiltration AnMBR

Performance of dynamic anaerobic membrane bioreactor (DAnMBR) with phase separation in treating high strength food processing wastewater

Food processing wastewater (FPW) contains high levels of oil and grease (O&G), especially from factories that produce fast food such as nuggets, sausages, and burger patties from beef, poultry, and fish. Therefore, the feasibility of replacing conventional membranes for the treatment of FPW with low-cost dynamic membranes (DM) as an alternative was investigated in this study. An anaerobic DM bioreactor (DAnMBR) was operated for 90 days to evaluate the treatment performance using real FPW under different organic loading rates (OLR) of 3.5, 5.0, 6.5, and 7.0 g COD (chemical oxygen demand)/L day. Once the reactor had reached a steady-state of 90% COD removal, the feed to the reactor was supplemented incrementally with FPW from 10% to 90% as COD to allow the methanogenic bacteria to acclimate any potential inhibitory effects from its recalcitrant content. The bioreactor presented a stable performance at OLR 5.0 g COD/L day with 97.5% removal of COD and reached 20 mg/L total suspended solids (TSS) discharge. A significant correlation between COD fractions removed via acidogenesis and methanogenesis with different OLR was found, indicating that the increase in treatment performance is beneficial to the methanogenic archaea activity. The methane gas production yield achieved a maximum of 0.40 L methane/g CODadded at OLR 3.5 and 5.0 g COD/L day. The average permeate flux in these studies is around 60 L/m2 h. The DM fouled after 57 days (at flux 27.16 L/m2 h immediate drop to 2.16 L/m2 h) when operated at 3.5 g COD/L day. After it fouled, the membrane underwent physical cleaning, backwashed in-situ for 5 min, and reused again without any chemical cleaning. The improved filtration resistance is contributed by the occurrence of DM fouling induced by the soluble microbial products (SMP) and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) release as well as the increased protein/carbohydrate (P/C) ratio in the mixed liquor