MILK WHEY TREATMENT WITH RECOVERY OF VALUABLE PRODUCTS

This paper deals with the environmentally acceptable disposal of the p olluting water solutions resulting from the manufacturing of cheese an d other similar milk derived products. The proposed treatment, which a llows one to recover the most valuable compounds of the milk whey, is based on the integration of a simple purification process with various independent manufacturing processes at different levels. The purifica tion process was obtained by a proper connection of ultrafiltration (U F) treatment with a reverse osmosis (RO) treatment. As a consequence, it is characterized by a significant lower energy consumption in compa rison to traditional evaporative processes which allow to produce a mu ch less valuable mixture of both whey proteins and lactose. The proces s was tested at pilot plant scale by using a previously described mult ipurpose pilot plant (MPP) equipped with all the automatically control led units required for this study.