Crossflow microfiltration of dilute yeast cell suspensions

The transient and steady state characteristics of dilute yeast cell suspensions in crossflow microfiltration and dead-end filtration are studied. It is shown that the yeast cell suspensions are compressible and that the specific cake resistance is time dependent when the yeast cell concentration is low. In the transient decay of the permeate flux, four regions can be identified. Some of these regions are absent if the rate of deposition of the cells on the membrane is very fast due to high yeast cell concentrations or due to low crossflow velocity. A pseudo-gel concentration at similar to 20 g/L, is obtained and it is found to be independent of crossflow velocity and membrane pore size.