Engineering Aspects of Membrane Separation and Application in Food Processing

Robert Field is an alumnus of the University of Cambridge where he earned MEng and PhD degrees in chemical engineering. He is currently a professor of engineering science at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. His work in membrane science and technology has examined the physical phenomena governing the  performance,  particularly  limitations  to  performance,  of  both  pressure-driven  and  activity-driven  membrane  processes.  The  greatest  industrial  impact  of  this  research continues to be in the evolution of strategies for fouling mitigation in mem-brane  processes.  He  has  made  a  world-leading  contribution  to  the  development  of  critical  flux  theory  for  porous  membrane  processes,  which  has  led  to  a  revolution  in  membrane  operation  because  designers  of  these  processes  no  longer  seek  high  fluxes  by  way  of  large  driving  pressures  and  high  cross-flow  velocity  but  tend  to  select modest fluxes to reduce the energy usage and cleaning costs. The change of mind-set can truly be described as a paradigm shift. There has also been significant work in pervaporation and membrane distillation. He has served as vice president of the European Membrane Society, and to date has written more than 100 papers and edited  or  coauthored  five  books  on  the  different  aspects  of  membrane  science  and  technology. He also worked for a number of years in the membrane group at Bath University and has been on sabbatical leave to MIT on three occasions.

Erika  Bekassy-Molnar  graduated  from  the  Technical  University  of  Budapest  (TUB), Hungary in 1962 as a mechanical engineer with specialization in chemical industry.  She  then  worked  at  the  TUB,  Faculty  of  Chemical  Engineering  as  assis-tant, associate, and full professor. Her academic qualifications include Doctor of the TUB  (1969),  Specialist  of  Cybernetics  (1970),  Candidate  of  Chemical  Sciences  of  the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) (1989), PhD from TUB (1994), Dr Habil from TUB (1994), and Doctor of the HAS (2004).In 1995, she became the head of the Department of Food Engineering at Szent Istvan University, Budapest and where she worked in the field of membrane science and  application.  The  main  focus  of  her  research  is  wine,  fruit  juice,  and  drinking  water production using different mild and cheaper membrane methods. Her research has been published in 83 English and 33 Hungarian scientific papers and books, 89 international congress full papers, and 242 proceedings. In 2001, she was awarded by the Ministry of Agriculture for the industrial applications of her patents. In 2009, she received the Gold Merit Cross of the Hungarian Republic. Currently, she works as a professor emerita at Szent Istvan University, Budapest.

Frank Lipnizki earned his BEng (Hons) in manufacturing and management from the University of Bath, United Kingdom in 1995; diploma in mechanical engineer-ing from the University of Bochum, Germany in 1996; PhD in chemical engineer-ing  from  the  University  of  Bath,  United  Kingdom  in  1999;  and  post-doc  in  food  engineering  from  Lund  University,  Sweden  in  2000.  He  is  a  business/product and associated  R&D  manager  at  Alfa  Laval—Business  Centre  Membranes,  Denmark  since  2001,  and  an  adjunct  professor of chemical  engineering  at  Lund  University,  Sweden since January 1, 2014.His  main  research interests are the integration and optimization of membrane  process  for  the  food,  biotech,  and  process  industry.  He  has  authored  more  than  30 publications in reviewed journals and books and more than 90 contributions in international conferences and workshops on membrane technology.

Gyula  Vatai  qualified  as  a chemical  engineer, with  specialization  in process engineering,  from  the  Faculty  of Technology, University  of  Novi  Sad, Novi  Sad,  Yugoslavia  in 1975.  He earned  his  PhD  in  technical  sciences  from  the  Faculty  of  Technology,  University  of  Novi  Sad,  Novi  Sad,  Yugoslavia  in  1986;  candidate  of  Chemical Sciences from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1995; Dr Habil from the University of Horticulture and Food Industry, Budapest in 1999; and Academy Doctor  of  Agricultural  Sciences  degree  from  the  Hungarian  Academy  of  Sciences  in  2010.  He  is  a  university  professor  since  2000  and  the  head  of  the  Department  of  Food  Engineering,  Faculty  of  Food  Science,  Szent  Istvan  University,  Budapest,  Hungary.  He  is  one  of  the  founders  of  the  educational  structure of the process engineering  branch.  He  is  also  the  head  of  the  Food  Science  Doctoral  School,  teaching and supervising PhD students.He has made significant achievements in the elaboration of hydrodynamics and mass  transfer  in  bioreactors,  liquid–liquid  extraction,  and  membrane  separation  processes.  His  research  is  focused  on  the  application  of  membrane technology in drinking water treatment, edible oil filtration, fruit juice concentration with complex membrane processes, and waste water separation as well as modeling of mass trans-fer  in  membrane separation  processes.  He  has  authored more than 200 scientific papers, of which 130 papers are in English with more than 1000 citations. He is the author of eight chapters in technical books (membrane applications) in English. He is a member of several national and international research organizations.