Membranes in food technology

The concept of membrane separation is widely established in nature using semi-permeable membranes for the separation of molecules. The theoretical foundations of membrane technology can be dated back to 1748, when Nollet discovered the effect of “osmosis” in relation to natural membranes, while Graham in 1833 developed the solution-diffusion model for diffusion of gases through semi-permeable membranes (Graham, 1833). The first industrial-scale membrane production started 1927 by Sartorius, producing nitrocellulose microfiltration membrane invented by Zsigmondy (Sartorius-Herbst et al., 2006). However, the real success story of membrane technology as an industrial separation process started only in the 1960s with the invention of the “phase inversion” membrane by Loeb and Sourirajan (1960, 1962)