This article addresses the technical and cost competitiveness of microfiltration and centrifugation to produce organic clarified bottle gourd juice. The microfiltration (MF) process was conducted for fresh and centrifuged juices and for transmembrane pressures ranging from 103.4 to 172.4 kPa. Pertinent flux decline was extensively analyzed to account for the extent of irreversible membrane fouling using resistances in series model, flux decline, and recovery ratios. Feed, centrifuged, and permeate juice samples were evaluated for nutritional content and physico-chemical parameters to affirm that MF of fresh juice is the best among all investigated cases. Compared with the centrifugation process, the MF process performed comparatively better in terms of cost competitiveness, juice clarity, microbial, and protein rejection. For a variation in juice production capacity of 110–10,000 L, the MF-based juice processing cost varied from 1.19 to 0.37 $/L, which accounts to 31.27–26.32% of fresh juice cost to infer upon promising performance of the low-cost ceramic membranes.

本文介绍了微滤和离心生产有机澄清的葫芦汁的技术和成本竞争力。对新鲜果汁和离心果汁以及跨膜压力范围为103.4至172.4 kPa进行微滤（MF）工艺。使用串联电阻，通量下降和回收率，对通量下降进行了广泛分析，以解释不可逆膜结垢的程度。对饲料，离心和渗透汁液样品的营养成分和理化参数进行了评估，以确认新鲜汁液的MF在所有调查案例中均是最好的。与离心过程相比，MF过程在成本竞争力，果汁澄清度，微生物和蛋白质排斥方面表现相对更好。