Cleaning of cation-exchange membranes used in electrodialysis for food industry by chemical solutions

•End-of-life MECs have been treated to remove fouling and increase their use duration.•Three non-aggressive, easy and economic cleaning strategies were tested in ex-situ mode.•Water-ethanol cleaning was found the most efficient for these MECs used in agri-food application.•Effective internal and external cleaning was demonstrated through a dozen measurements.•Microheterogeneous model was applied for interpreting the results and microstructure.