Rotary Drum Vacuum Filtration

A Technology Feature Article

Technology: Rotary Drum Vacuum Filtration
Type: Filtration & Membrane Technologies

The RDV filtration process recovers juice and wine from lees that would otherwise be discarded. As much as 80 percent of juice from lees that was once dumped down the drain can now be kept – all adding to yield per tonne of grapes harvested.

Vintech Pacific operate several mobile RDV filtration units from four square metres to twenty square metres capacity.

In RDV filtration, vacuum is employed to layer expanded perlite filter medium onto the outer surface of a rotating drum. Once the perlite ‘cake’ is in place, the vacuum is used to draw juice or wine through the filter medium, depositing lees solids on the filter surface leaving clear juice or wine to pass through. As the drum rotates, the deposited lees are ablated away, leaving a clean filter surface.

To greater care for the environment, Vintech Pacific uses Harborlite, an expanded perlite product as a filtration medium, rather than traditional Diatomaceous Earth.

If juice, the filtrate is sufficiently clear to be blended back with settled juice for fermentation.
The high rate of recovery of usable juice from lees that would have been waste means RDV is not only an effective means of lees filtration but extremely cost effective too.

To discuss how Vintech Pacific and our Rotary Drum Filtration technology can bring efficiencies to your winemaking program, please contact your nearest Vintech Pacific regional office.