The dairy industry was one of the first industries, outside the water industry, adopting membranes in the 1960’s. Since then, membranes have become established in the fractionation, concentration and clarification of various dairy products ranging from milk to whey and cheese. This presentation provides an outlook into the future of membrane processes, modules and applications in the dairy industry.

The first part of the presentation will focus on new applications of the conventional membrane processes; microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis. This will be followed by a discussion of applications of the emerging membrane processes; forward osmosis, membrane distillation, electrodialysis and pervaporation. The potential and limitations of these emerging processes in the dairy industry will be covered, e.g. the use of forward osmosis for whey concentration and electrodialysis for whey demineralisation.

Following on, new membrane modules will be discussed such as vibrating modules and rotating ceramics discs which minimise the effect of concentration polarisation and reduce membrane fouling.  Furthermore, opportunities to improve performance of current modules by processes e.g. back-pulsing will be included.

The final section will review the opportunities of membrane processes in the water loop of the dairy industry by either recovering water in production using nanofiltration and reverse osmosis or membrane bioreactors in dairy wastewater treatment plants. 

Overall, the presentation will demonstrate that membrane processes are not only widely established in the dairy industry but have even the potential to enter new and to improve current applications.