Separation of phenolic compounds from canned mandarin production wastewater by Ultrafiltration and Nanofiltration

Dataset related to the publicaction "Separation of phenolic compounds from canned mandarin production wastewater by Ultrafiltration and Nanofiltration" published in Journal of Water Process Engineering 59, 105041 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwpe.2024.105041. Materials and methods Mandarin wastewater Samples of Scalding Wastewater and Segmenter Wastewater were kindly provided by Agriconsa S.A. (Algemesí, Valencia, Spain). First, Scalding and Segmenter Wastewater samples of 1 L were collected, while both processes were running in constant agitation. According to the total phenolic content, Segmenter Wastewater was selected for the separation processes with membranes. Therefore, Segmenter Wastewater samples were collected and transported in high density polyethylene bottles of 60 L. Ultrafiltration Previous to the ultrafiltration process, wastewater samples were centrifugated (ThermoFisher, USA) at 17200 RCF for 6 min. For the ultrafiltration step, a total of two flat-sheet and two spiral-wound membranes were selected, of two different molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) 5 and 50 kDa. Nanofiltration The permeates obtained with both spiral-wound UF membranes (5 kDa and 50 kDa) in the concentration tests were the feeds for the NF tests (NF270-2540 from Dow Chemical, EEUU). NF270-2540 is a flat-sheet membrane, made of Polypiperazine-amide material, with a MWCO of 200-400 Da [21–23]. The specific membrane area was 72 cm2. This membrane was selected according to the molecular weight of the target compounds, which were phenolic compounds derived from the mandarin fruit (Table 3). Among them, the most interesting compounds were flavonoids and terpenoids. Therefore, the NF270 membrane was considered suitable to obtain sufficient rejection values without compromising the permeate flux. NF experiments were performed in a 72 cm2 tailor-made module with a feed tank capacity of 12 L. The plant was operated under batch operating mode