Reverse Osmosis of Milk

Reverse Osmosis of Skim Milk

Concentration of skim milk with Reverse Osmosis membranes can be achieved to a maximum total solids of 30%.

Cheese Vat

The increased solids have been used to fortify cheese vats with higher solids milk. This allows for higher equipment utilization rates and greater plant throughput based on existing equipment.

Ice Cream

The same application is being used in the ice cream industry for increasing skim milk solids for ice cream mix. This allows an Ice Cream manufacturer to source whole milk for cream harvesting and then make concentrated skim for in-house use. The ability to direct source cream and condensed skim is an ingredient cost savings compared with buying value added cream and condensed skim pre-processed from the marketplace. An additional advantage is that Reverse Osmosis is a cold concentration technique. The Ice cream manufacturer has a better "dairy" flavor from Reverse Osmosis milk than from evaporated milk that is produced by adding heat to induce a phase change and evaporate the water from the milk. The flavor result of evaporated milk is often a cooked or burnt milk flavor. Reverse Osmosis of skim milk has a fresh milk flavor and can enhance current ice cream mix recipes.

Cultured Dairy

Reverse Osmosis of skim milk can also be used in the production of low fat or non-fat yogurt. Often yogurt manufacturers are faced with an ingredient dilemma in the production of non-fat yogurts because they need to add non-fat dry milk to increase the solids due to the lack of milk fat. Using Reverse Osmosis Skim milk versus evaporated condensed milk allows for less heat damage or denatured protein found in evaporated milk. The organic yogurt manufacturers often cannot find a supply of organic non-fat dry milk for increasing the milk solids. Reverse Osmosis can take fresh organic skim milk and dial in the solids number needed for making a non-fat or fat free yogurt.

Evaporator Expansion

Reverse Osmosis of skim milk is also used as a system to complement existing skim milk evaporators as a way to increase capacity by pre-concentration. An RO system ahead of evaporation is generally a less expensive solution to increasing throughput ahead of non-fat milk dryers.