Filtration in food ingredients

From clarifying juice to ensuring shelf-stable sauces, filtration plays a behind-the-scenes role in nearly every food ingredient we consume. It’s not just about removing particles; it’s a critical step in safeguarding quality, consistency, and compliance. Whether you’re dealing with dairy proteins, plant extracts, or fermentation by-products, the right filtration setup ensures ingredients stay pure, stable, and regulation-ready. In this blog, we explore the key roles, technologies, and considerations shaping modern food ingredient filtration.

Process filtration is essential to achieve food safety and improve the quality of food ingredients. There are 6 main roles for food ingredient filtration:

1. Contaminant removal: Filtration helps remove physical impurities such as particles, debris, and microorganisms from raw materials, ingredients, and the final product. This is vital for maintaining product quality and safety.
   
   
2. Microbial control: Filtration is an effective method for controlling and removing microorganisms, including bacteria, yeast, and mould, which can spoil the product or pose health risks to consumers.
   
   
3. Clarification: Filtration is used for the clarification of liquids, removing suspended solids and impurities to achieve a clear and visually appealing final product, especially in beverages like juices and wines.
   
   
4. Stabilization: Filtration helps stabilize products by removing unstable particles that can lead to sedimentation or separation over time. This is important in products like dressings, sauces, and emulsions.
   
   
5. Consistency in flavour and texture: Filtration aids in achieving consistent flavour, texture, and colour by removing unwanted components that can vary in composition and concentration.
   
   
6. Compliance with regulations: Stringent regulations govern the food and beverage industry to ensure the safety and quality of products. Filtration processes help companies comply with these regulations and meet industry standards.

There are five main types of filtration in the food industry, typically sorted by the size of particles that they retain: prefiltration, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis. To understand the fundamental mechanisms for these different methods, you can find more information in our previous blog on the different types of process filtration.

The visual below illustrates the progression of filtration methods based on particle retention, from suspended solids in prefiltration to dissolved salts in reverse osmosis.

Filtration supports a wide range of ingredient processes; these examples show where and how it’s applied -

Often, a combination of the different filtration solutions is needed in a single process. To choose the right filtration system, you have to consider the specific stage of your process.

Take an example where well water is a food ingredient. The first filtration step for the well water could be a coarse prefiltration step with a bag filter. However, the final filtration step before it turns into a food ingredient should be a sterile grade filtration step to retain microorganisms and ensure product safety. One cannot work without the other: if only the sterile grade membrane filter is used first, it will clog too early due to large contaminants. If only the bag were used, bacteria would end up in the food ingredients and lead to an unsafe final product. Typically, even more prefiltration steps are required between the bag and the membrane filter, such as melt-blown and other coarse particle filters.

Food safety regulations are non-negotiable. To ensure compliance, it’s essential to use filters that are certified for food contact and manufactured in facilities that meet ISO 9001 standards. Filters must also comply with regulations such as EU 1935/2004, REACH and RoHS to prevent unwanted substances from migrating into the product. For a deeper dive into selecting compliant filters and building a safe, efficient setup, explore our dedicated blog: Choosing the right process filter for your application. 

There are multiple benefits from applying membrane filtration in food ingredient processing:

• Retention mechanism is mainly based on size exclusion
• Easy integrity testing is possible
• No fibre shedding or sloughing off
• Retention of multiple contamination types in one step

The field of food ingredient filtration technologies is evolving together with the market. For example, recent challenges arise for the filtration of non-alcoholic beverages. Since there is no alcohol to naturally kill microorganisms, there is a greater risk of microbiological spoilage. It also poses a challenge for pasteurization since there is no synergy between alcohol and heat. Advancements in cold final filtration such as membrane filters, provide a good alternative method to achieve microbial stability.
 

A second advancement is that the food industry more widely applies vaporized hydrogen peroxide (VPHP) sterilization of their systems. Originally adopted in healthcare settings as replacement for the toxic ethylene oxide, the FDA has recognized the method in the “established category A list”. The food industry is following this recognition, since this method is faster and has a significantly lower energy consumption than steam sterilization. The newest generation of process filters are being developed to withstand more VPHP sterilization cycles for longer lifetime.
 

Another good example is the growing popularity of plant-based proteins. They can help us to complement our increasingly popular plant-based diet at a lower environmental impact than the proteins associated with livestock production. Out of several separation techniques, membrane filtration is the most effective thanks to the selective separation, simple operational conditions, and easy automation. New developments in filtration systems aim to reduce membrane fouling and increase the operation time without cleaning. 

All filters are available in food-contact compliant materials, tested to meet FDA and EU guidelines. A few examples from our portfolio:

• Prefiltration: PFP, PFP-A, PFP-B, SFG-G
• Sterile filtration: SME⁺, BME⁺, SME-X⁺, SMV, SMT-G
• Activated carbon: ASC
• Steam filtration: MSS, MPSC

As food ingredient production becomes more specialized and quality-driven, the role of filtration continues to grow in both importance and complexity. From prefiltration to sterile-grade membranes, choosing the right combination of filters is essential to protect product integrity, meet safety regulations, and support innovation in modern food processing. Whether you're working with dairy, plant-based proteins, or fermentation-derived ingredients, reliable and compliant filtration is the foundation for consistent, clean, and high-performing products. With a wide range of validated solutions and technical expertise, Atlas Copco is here to help you build a filtration process that’s ready for today’s demands and tomorrow’s.
Contact our filtration experts to get started.