The concentration of acerola juice, involves removal of water with the objective of reducing packing, storage and transport costs. The reverse osmosis (RO) is a process of increasing interest in food industry and among the advantages they stand out: the low consumption of energy and the minimum thermal damages is caused to the products. The objective of this work was to evaluate the influence of different operation conditions in relation to the permeate flux, in the concentration process of the

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... acerola juice by RO. All the RO experiments were carried out with retentate recycling. The concentration by RO, were carried on the transmembrane pressures of 20, 30 and 40 bar and at 23ºC and 40ºC, being used a membrane of composite film in spiral module (99% NaCl rejection). The acerola pulp was defrosted and treated with Citrozym Ultra L enzyme (100 ppm, 45ºC ,1 hour), then it was ultrafiltrated at 3 bar at the same temperature, in 0.1 µm ceramic membrane, and so it was concentrated by RO. It was verified that the pressure and the temperature influenced the concentration and the permeate flux obtained in the RO process. The flux decreased along the processing, once the feeding becomes more concentrate, increasing the viscosity, osmotic pressure and retained sugar.