Current and future applications of nanofiltration in food processing

Nanofiltration (NF) is a pressure-driven membrane operation with separation characteristics between those of reverse osmosis (RO) and ultrafiltration (UF)widely used for severalapplications such as water softening and wastewater treatment. With the increased demand for productswith greater nutritional value and environmentally-friendly processing procedures,NF has becamea reliable and techno-economically attractive operationin the food processing industry for the fractionation, concentration and purification of different products and by-products. In this chapter an overview of NF applications in some selected areas of food processing, such as fruit juice clarification, dairy, sugar and wine industry,is given in the light of the recent developments on pilot and large scale investigations.Recent advances on the use of NF membranes forthe recovery of functional compounds from agro-food by-products are also included.Key advantages which can be achieved in both stand-alone and integrated systems over conventional technologies, are analyzed and discussed.