Membrane technologies in the food and beverage industry

The application of membrane processes as an alternative to traditional separation, purification, and concentrated product methods for ???sustainable production??? and ???zero waste approach??? in the food and beverage industry is a very popular and growing subject. The main reasons for the widespread use of suitable membrane processes in the food and beverage industry, depending on the variety of applications; (i) shortening the process by reducing the process steps compared to traditional methods, (ii) depending on minimized changes in the loss of aroma and nutritional components of food and beverages due to high -temperature employment in the traditional methods and increasing the end product quality, (iii) high process selection and efficiency, (iv) being a healthier and more environmentally-friendly system that ensures food safety by providing the opportunity to work under optimum conditions at which prevent to damage of the useful components in food. Pressure-driven membrane processes, namely MF, UF, NF, and RO lead to effective separation of components with a large range of particle sizes Furthermore, membrane processes are more economical in terms of energy consumption compared to traditional techniques. This review article includes detailed information about the advantages of membrane technologies used in the production of non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages in the food and beverage industry over the traditional methods, the basic principles of membrane technologies, membrane types and their application areas, real industrial scale application examples, and studies reported in the literature.