| The bulk wastewater generated during fish meal production is known as stickwater. Stickwater has high organic content and when discharged directly (untreated) to the ocean can cause negative environmental impacts in areas surrounding the outfall. Stickwater solids are primarily valuable proteins, which when recovered can increase fish processing byproduct (fish meal) production and decrease disposal cost for some seafood processing facilities. Ultrafiltration is a pressure-drive membrane separation process that removes particles from an aqueous solution through size exclusion. Utilization of ceramic membranes could assist in recovery of marketable protein by allowing passage of unwanted dissolved constituents (water, salt and ash) prior to concentration downstream in evaporative processes. This research assessed, through bench-scale techniques, the critical flux and total solids recovery performance of tubular inorganic membranes when filtering Pollock stickwater from Kodiak, Alaska. Four different TAMI Filtanium inorganic (ceramic) membranes of average pore size ranging from 50-kilodalton (kDa) to 1.4-micrometer (microm) were evaluated for solids recovery. |
