Demineralization of juice and by-products

Process Layout

Demineralized fruit juices or side products are ideal sweet blends for many beverages. In this case, both cations and anions have to be removed. In most cases, polymeric adsorbents are used to remove color bodies at the same time.

In this process, the first step is removing cations and most proteins through cation exchange on a macroreticular strongly acidic cation exchange resin. The cation exchange resin is followed by a high performing adsorbent. Most colour bodies can be more easily removed from the beverage at low pH.

After the adsorbent bed, a weak base anionic resin is taking out the free organic and inorganic acids, as shown in the figure below.

In case, the organic acid content of the beverage is very high, it can be advisable to install a second weak base resin before the cationic resin to remove free acids first.