2025 Agenda

Empowering the Future: Workforce Development through Membrane Technology

Workforce development is a top industry concern, and membrane technology has a significant role to play in shaping the future of a wide range of food processing and water treatment applications. This session will explore the evolving landscape of job opportunities in membrane technology, focusing on key areas of innovation, including applications in the dairy industry and beyond. This timely keynote presentation will address:

• Connecting market trends and innovations in membrane technology with workforce solutions
• New and emerging career opportunities in membrane technology
• Strategies to prepare for the future of work, including upskilling, reskilling, and fostering a culture of continuous learning

Speaker

Manisha Dhawan
Vice President, Applied Membranes Inc.

Manisha Dhawan, vice president at Applied Membranes Inc. (AMI), is a keynote speaker, executive, and author of “The Digital Agile Leader.” With over two decades of experience leading change management and digital transformation initiatives at various organizations including PwC and Deloitte Consulting, Manisha has helped teams and leaders build critical skills to drive results in their careers and organizations. At AMI, a global leader in membrane technology, Manisha leads various strategic initiatives.

Dairy-Specific Targets for the Betterment of Membrane Technology

Membrane technologies have wide applications across critical processes in the dairy industry, ranging across MF, UF, NF, RO and brine UF. Due to the unique nature of dairy membrane operations and the continued evolution of the needs of the industry, numerous gaps exist between the present and future needs of dairy and the characteristics, configurations, consistency and quality of membranes provided by many of today’s suppliers. In this session, we will explore both general needs such as fouling resistance and extension of useful membrane life and specific opportunities for improvement such as surface area optimization and leaf pack configuration that will help ensure membrane technologies continued suitability for use in dairy’s critical operations.

Speaker

Water Conservation and Efficiency Opportunities in Specific Areas of Dairy Membrane Operations

As in other industries, managing, saving, and optimizing the use of water has become an absolute necessity in order to control costs, improve sustainability, and preserve compliance with regulatory requirements. This is especially important in dairy which is a water-intensive industry by its nature and which is facing internal and external pressures for enhanced management of this valuable resource. In this presentation, current industry practices around MF, UF, NF, and RO will be discussed using real-world case studies, where improvement opportunities will be identified in each of four specific areas of membrane use spanning their entire life cycle from startup to the end of their useful life cycle. Potential optimization actions will address not just the membrane unit operations themselves but will also cover the attendant systems such as sanitary valves and CIP. Improvements options will also be presented across a broad cross-section of dairy membrane users ranging from smaller processors who may benefit from “quick wins” with implementations that are less capital intensive to more sweeping, complex opportunities with longer time horizons that may be better suited for large-scale operations.

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Emerging Membrane Utilization for Effective Alternative Production of High-Value Dairy Ingredients

Very recent research shows that spiral wound membrane elements are capable of increasingly complex protein fractionation tasks that until now have relied on techniques such as ion exchange chromatography for isolation, concentration and recovery. Membrane capabilities for the enrichment of specific whey proteins such as immunoglobulins and lactoferrin will be explained from the perspective of choosing the right membranes and will highlight the emerging potential for innovative products.
Next-generation ultrafiltration membranes are likely to be the workhorse technologies of these new, complex fractionation processes because they can deliver improved selectivity and enrichment in these demanding separations while providing higher flux. Field validation results for a new 10 kDa UF membrane compared performance against reference products across a range of relevant dairy streams including WPCs, WPI, and even skim milk. Those data will be shared to illustrate the preservation of separation performance while achieving 10-40% higher flux, depending on the test case.

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Synthesis of Antifouling Filtration Membranes

We produce controlled nanostructured membranes from crosslinking of self-assembled diacrylated poloxamer. At sufficiently high concentrations, poloxamers form lyotropic phases, such as lamellar, cubic packing of spherical micelles, and hexagonal (H1) packing of rod-like micelles. These mesophases have a periodic structure with a domain size of 2-50 nm. The normal oil-in-water hexagonal packing of rod-like micelles can be used as a template to produce orderly packed nanofiber membranes. The obtained nanostructure has a continuous 3D transport pathway. This study presents a polymerized mesophase with H1 structure, which can alter its transport properties in response to changes in temperature and pH. The formulation includes diacrylated poloxamers, which are thermoresponsive components acting as both macromer and structure-directing amphiphile. Therefore, the membrane pore size changes with temperature when is in contact with water. Furthermore, the precursor contains acrylic acid (AAc) as the charged component, which upon copolymerization with diacrylated poloxamers, not only enables ion separation through Donnan exclusion, but also imparts pH-responsive behavior for the separation of ionic species. We show that the nanostructured polymer can be used as a nanofiltration membrane with separation properties adjustable with temperature and pH. The membrane also has an exceptional resistance to fouling by various solutes due to its highly hydrophilic surface.

Speaker

Dr. Reza Foudazi
Associate Professor, University of Oklahoma

Dr. Reza Foudazi is an associate professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering (SCBME) at the University of Oklahoma (OU). Before joining OU in 2021, he was a tenured associate professor at New Mexico State University (NMSU). The current research activities in Dr. Foudazi’s group are self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules, templating approach for synthesis of porous polymers, and rheology of soft matter, with the long-term goal of producing responsive multifunctional materials for sustainability and environmental applications. Dr. Foudazi has authored more than 75 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is inventor of 7 intellectual properties on topics such as producing porous polymers, membranes for filtration, and Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) remediation. Dr. Foudazi is also Co-founder of Filtravate, a membrane technology company for applications in the bioprocessing and biopharmaceutical industries. He received the Early Career Award from NMSU Research Council in 2016, Polymer Processing Society Early Career Award in 2019, ACS PMSE Young Investigator Award in 2020, and NMSU Intellectual Property Award in 2021. He was also recognized in the “Mentoring Excellence” program of NMSU in 2016.

CIP Regimes for New Food Applications

During the last couple of years, new protein products have arrived across the food industry, gaining wider commercial appeal. The focus has mainly been on how to manufacture these products, focusing on formulating products with appealing taste and consistency. However, less is known about how to clean the plant afterward. Some of these processing applications are for the concentration and/or fragmentation of fish protein or plant-based protein. Other applications are specific to beverages, such as the clarification of oat drinks. New ingredient and product innovation using membrane filtration is ongoing. This session will discuss first how to identify the fouling material. The presentation will then discuss:

• How to optimize the production process to minimize fouling
• Investigating and testing known cleaning agents
• Creating new detergents, if needed to suit and/or attain robust consistent cleanability

Speaker

Ronni Rasmussen
Application Specialist Membranes & CIP, Novadan ApS

More than 20 years in the dairy business. Former commissioning engineer at Tetra Pak and GEA Filtration. Last 7 years within the cleaning business mainly CIP and membranes.

Innovation Today for Tomorrow’s Membrane Cleaning

The food and beverage industry continues to widely embrace membrane filtration systems for specific process applications, so it’s well known we are currently in a period of transformation. We are seeing changes in work environments and customer or consumer expectations as well as technological advancements that present a unique blend of challenges and opportunities. This presentation will discuss our company’s journey to establish the necessary confidence customers need to be assured their membrane filtration systems are cleaned as efficiently and effectively as possible. This confidence comes from niche technology that can be implemented into a wide range of operations and utilized with real-time intelligence.

Speaker

Jamison Vanden Einde
Director of Commercial Technology, Hydrite Chemical Co.

Jamison Vanden Einde has 25+ years manufacturing and sanitation experience within the food and beverage industries. His passion for product development, project management and hands on approach to understanding industry process intricacies is what allows him to support the efforts of Hydrite and our customers as a Director of Commercial Technology. He is especially strong in CIP, environmental and membrane system cleaning as well as process aid application and optimization. Jamison has a B.S. from South Dakota State University and resides in Le Sueur, MN with his wife and two children.

The Science Behind Membrane Cleaning

It is important to choose the right chemistries when cleaning membranes. In this presentation, Caleb Power, Technical Support Specialist, Ecolab, will explore essential details surrounding soil-based membrane cleaning. He will walk attendees through the various steps required, outlining each type of chemistry (alkaline, acid, surfactant, oxidizers, and enzymes) and how they function to remove soil from membranes used in a variety of dairy-based applications. This session will also cover the importance of the multiple checks needed during each membrane clean-in-place (CIP) step.

Speaker

Caleb Power
Technical Support Specialist, Ecolab

Caleb is an Exec Area Technical Support Coordinator leading the membrane specialist team and has spent the last 9 year with Ecolab’s Food and Beverage Department.
Before Caleb’s current role, he spent 3 years on the technical service Hotline and before that spent 6 years as part of the research and development team for Ecolab where he spent his time developing new cleaners and sanitizers for the dairy market.
Caleb has received 7 different patents for the work he has done on new and innovating chemistries.

Real-Life Savings with Enzyme-Based Membrane Cleaning
Part 1: Yeast

Industrial filtration systems for food processing often face challenges related to fouling, inefficient cleaning, and costly maintenance. Conventional cleaning protocols often fall short, leading to reduced membrane performance, increased operational costs, and greater environmental impact. In this two-part session, Thibault Wauters, Head of Filtration & Sales, Realco, will show how new enzyme blends, including those designed for cold cleaning applications, perform in real-world applications to yield substantial gains in efficiency, sustainability, and total cost of ownership. In part one, he will cover a case study from a yeast production facility, where inefficient cleaning significantly hindered separation efficiency and reduced membrane lifespan. By implementing a tailored enzymatic solution optimized at a targeted pH, membrane lifespan has doubled or more, saving substantial replacement costs and preventing costly downtime. Concentrate separation efficiency improved by over 30%. Permeate quality improved and became more consistent, allowing for additional water reuse in the process and reduced effluent volumes. The higher concentrate total solids achieved reduced evaporation costs.

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Real-Life Savings with Enzyme-Based Membrane Cleaning
Part 2: Potato Starch

Industrial filtration systems for food processing often face challenges related to fouling, inefficient cleaning, and costly maintenance. Conventional cleaning protocols often fall short, leading to reduced membrane performance, increased operational costs, and greater environmental impact. In this two-part session, Thibault Wauters, Head of Filtration & Sales, Realco, will show how new enzyme blends, including those designed for cold cleaning applications, perform in real-world applications to yield substantial gains in efficiency, sustainability, and total cost of ownership. In part two, he will cover a case study from a potato starch facility, where membranes used in protein-concentration processes suffered from severe fouling after repeated use, making even extreme and frequent cleanings ineffective. Despite numerous attempts to clean the membranes using standard protocols, including protease-based solutions, the pilot plant was unable to maintain effective filtration, rendering the project unviable, as membranes grew irreversibly clogged after only a few runs. After an in-depth analysis of the residues, a tailored enzymatic cleaning protocol successfully restored membrane functionality, enabling daily production throughout the entire potato-processing season.

Speaker

Facility Tour

Ecolab Shuman Campus Technology Center

Eagan, MN