Automatic system for controlling and optimising of ultrafiltration processes in foodstuffs and/or chemical and/or chemical-pharmaceutical industrial plants and ultrafiltration process utilising such a system

Claim 1

Automatic system for controlling and optimising of an ultrafiltration process in foodstuffs and/or chemical and/or chemical/pharmaceutical industrial plants, said process being suitable for carrying out a separation between two chemical species by means of the passage of a predetermined product through one or more porous polymeric membranes belonging to a filtration section of a plant, said plant further comprising a chemical regenerating section and a washing section, the carrying out of said process being controlled by means of physical, chemical, mechanical, fluids-dynamical and microbiological parameters such as, for instance, permeation speed, product turbidity, pressure, rate of flow, chlorine concentration, pH, temperature, characterised in that it comprises a plurality of detectors-transducers suitable for istantaneous- ly transforming detected values of said parameters into electric signals, said signals being fed, during a process phase, to a microprocessor suitable for elaborating said electric signals and for supplying an electronic computer with istantaneous data relating said process phase, in that said computer is suitable for comparing said data with predetermined threshold data which are relative to parameters of the same kind, and for carrying out a combined analysis of the data relative to parameters of a given kind, whose variation exerts an influence on the behaviour of parameters of another kind, with the istantaneous data relative to the latter, and in that said computer is suitable for allowing the prosecution of the process in the case where the result of said combined analysis would fall within a first predetermined range of values, for sending alarm signals to acoustic and/or visual signalling devices in the case where the result of said combined analysis would fall within a second predetermined range of values, and for stopping the process in the case where the result of said combined analysis would consist in a value exceeding said second predetermined range of values.