Mathematical and statistical modeling of glucose permeation through ultrafiltration system

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) have been recently proposed for enhancing enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocelluloses by simultaneously and selectively removing the produced sugars from the reaction system. An inverted dead-end MBR with polyethersulfone membrane was used to investigate glucose permeation. The effects of glucose concentration, water flowrate, and membrane molecular weight cut-offs (MWCO), were investigated. The developed diffusion-convective model predicted glucose permeation with R² value of 0.96. The statistical analysis showed that the effects of glucose concentration and water flowrate were significant, with P-value less than 0.05 for both, whereas that of the MWCO was insignificant (P-value of 0.66). This is the first attempt to mathematically describe the behavior of glucose across ultrafiltration membrane, while taking into consideration both molecular diffusion and convective flow. The findings of this work are essential for understanding the behavior and enhancing the performance of solute permeation through ultrafiltration membrane, which is the heart of many processes.