In this lecture

STARCH PROCESSING • Starch

– Structure
TECHNOLOGY – Composition
• Cassava starch processing
– Processing line
– Technological process
Assoc. Prof. PHAM VAN HUNG
• Potato starch processing
– Processing line
– Technological process

What are these? Root structure

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 Starch Appearance
STARCH
- A storage carbohydrate
- Composed by two glucose polymers:
Cassava Potato Sweet Potato
- Amylose
- Amylopectin
- Main component in many foods
Edible Canna Kudzu Wheat
- The most important carbohydrate source in human
nutrition

Rice Corn

Starch morphology Starch Properties

Native starch
Not soluble in cold water
Settles
No adhesive power
No binding capacity

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 STARCH SOURCE Starch isolation
Source Content
(%) The principle of isolating starch from plants
Wheat 73.9 can be explained in simple terms as follows:
Rice 85.8  The parts of plants containing the starch are
chopped into such small pieces that cells containing
Potato 14.8 starch are also destroyed.
Sweet potato 15.6  The starch is then “rinsed” out of the cells before
being separated out by means of filtration and
Cassava 95.0
centrifugal processes.
Bean 40.9  This also includes the separation out of cellular
Peas 7.0 structures. The starch is finally dried.

Processing procedure

Potato starch processing

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 Potato starch processing Potato starch processing
• Delivery and unloading potatoes
• Delivery and unloading potatoes
• Cleaning
Potatoes are delivered to the starch plants via
• Rasping of tubers road or rail transport. Unloading of potatoes
• Potato juice separation could be done in two ways:
• Starch extraction – dry - using elevators and tippers,
• Starch milk raffination – wet - using strong jet of water.
• Dewatering of refined starch milk and
starch drying

Potato starch processing Potato starch processing

• Cleaning
- Coarsely cleaning of potatoes takes place during the
transport of potatoes to the scrubber by channel. In
addition, before the scrubber, straw and stones
separators are installed.
- The main cleaning is conducted in scrubber. The
remaining stones, sludge and light wastes are removed
at this step.
- Water used for washing is then purified and recycled
back into the process.
• Rasping of tubers
- Most often the rasping of potato tubers is carried out with
a rotary grater.
- The purpose of this stage is disruption of cell walls,
which therefore release the starch.
- In practice, potato cells are not entirely destroyed and
part of the starch remains in the mash.
- Potato pulp rapidly turns dark, because tyrosine presented
in the potato is oxidised by polyphenol oxidase, which is
located in the cellular juice. Therefore, cellular juice must
be separated as soon as possible.

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 Potato starch processing
• Potato juice separation
This allows the recovery full-value protein
from juice and reduces the onerousness of
water juice as a sludge.
Potato starch processing
• Starch milk raffination
- Raw starch milk is purified in the refining process. This
involves the removal of small fibers from the starch milk
and then the removal of juice water and starch milk
condensation.
- For this purpose, the screens and hydrocyclones are
commonly used. Hydrocyclones is a device to classify,
separate or sort particles in a liquid suspension based on
the ratio of their centripetal force to fluid resistance.
- In order to prevent enzymatic darkening of potato juice,
the chemical refining of starch is carried out using
sulfurous acid. Refined starch milk has a density of about
22° Be, which is about 38% of starch.
Potato starch processing
• Starch extraction
- After separation of potato juice, the pulp is directed to the
washing starch station, to isolate the starch.
- Most used are stream-oriented washers. In these
machines, pulp diluted with water is washed with a strong
stream of water to flush out the milk starch.
- The mash smuggling with water is a waste product –
dewatered potato pulp.
- Starch milk is contaminated by small fiber particles
(potato tissue fragments) and the remaining components of
the potato juice – that’s why it is called raw starch milk.
Potato starch processing
• Dewatering of refined starch milk and starch drying
- It is a suspension of starch in water, which needs dewatering up
to 20% of moisture.
- Dewatering of refined starch milk is carried out in two stages.
In the first stage, the excess water is removed by means of a
rotary vacuum filter. Secondly moist starch is dried, without
starch pasting.
- In the dryer, moist starch (with water content 36 – 40%) is
floating in strong and hot (160 °C) air flow and then dried during
2 – 3 seconds. Then, the starch is separated from hot air in
cyclones.
- Due to short time of high temperature drying and intensive
water evaporation from the starch granules, its surface is heated
only to 40 °C.
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 Potato starch processing Potato starch production characteristic
Processing 2.000 t per 24 hours
• Bagging
Ratio of starch extraction 87%
- Received starch is storing separately in silos, in jute bags
(100 kg) or paper bags (50 kg). Water expenditure: 6.5m3/t
- washing 2.5m3/t
- There are three kinds of starch: superior extra, superior - Technological 4.0m3/t
and prima. Water steam expenditure 400 – 500 kg/t starch

- Different sorts of starch depend on degree of purity and

SO2 expenditure 0.8 kg/t potatoes
whiteness.
- The differences between them are in an acidity and content Yield: per ton of potatoes (16,8%) 175 kg starch
of mineral substances.
Loss: about 10%
- potatoes losses (transport and washing) 0.5%
- pulp starch losses 8 – 9%
-juicy water starch losses 1.0%

Waste products Waste products

• Potato juice is a liquid waste product separated from the
potatoes pulp after the rasping, using centrifuges or decanters. It
contains about 5% of dry substance, including about 2%
valuable protein of the potato of high nutritional value,
minerals, vitamins and other. Modern starch plants separate the
juice from the mash.
• Potato protein can be extracted from the juice by coagulation
with heat at low pH. About 600 kg of coagulated protein from
each 1000 kg of potato protein can be recovered this way. The
coagulated protein product contains about 80% protein, 2.5%
minerals, 1.5% fat, 6% nitrogen-free substances and 10% water.
• Because of the full range of the exogenic amino acids the
formulation is a valuable protein feed. The remaining potato
Juice is used as fertilizer.
• Potato pulp is a side product of washing the starch from the
mash. It contains all non-starchy substances insoluble in
water (fragments of wall of cells) fibres and bounded starch
which cannot be mechanically separated from the blended
parties of potato. The dry substance of the pulp contains 30%
of starch, which makes it a good source for animal feed. The
pulp contains a lot of water, dry solids about 16%, which is
inconvenient in transportation and storage.
• Juicy water is a liquid side product obtained after refining of
starch milk. It is ten times diluted potato juice. As it is a
sludge and it cannot be discharged to open water. It must be
treated as waste water or is used as fertilizer.

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 Potato starch processing plant

Cassava starch processing

Cassava starch processing technology Cassava starch processing technology

PEELING AND WASHING
- The washing here serves to remove the outer skin of the root as
• PEELING AND WASHING well as the adhering dirt.
• RASPING OR PULPING - Only the outer skin or corky layer is removed, as it is profitable to
recover the starch from the cortex. The inner part of the peel
• SCREENING represents about 81.5 percent of the weight of the whole root.
- The mechanical washer is a perforated cylindrical tank which is
• SETTLING AND PURIFICATION OF STARCH immersed in water.
- Washing is done by the action of water sprayed, assisted by the
• DRYING abrasion of the roots both against one another and against the sides
of the cylinder or the paddles.
• FINISHING AND PACKAGING - The roots are hand-fed from one end and when they come out at
the other they are clean and partially peeled, the action being
continuous. Dirty water and skin are periodically drained out
through a small opening in the concrete tank.

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 Cassava starch processing technology
RASPING OR PULPING
• It is necessary to rupture all cell walls in order to release the
starch granules. This can be done by biochemical or
mechanical action.
• The biochemical method, an old one, allows the roots to
ferment to a certain stage; then they are pounded to a pulp
and the starch is washed from the pulp with water. This
method does not give complete yields and the quality of the
resulting starch is inferior.
• Mechanical action is carried out by slicing the roots and
then rasping, grating or crushing them, which tears the flesh
into a fine pulp.
Cassava starch processing technology
SCREENING
• In separating the pulp from the free starch, a liberal amount of
water must be added to the pulp, and the resulting suspension
stirred vigorously before screening.
• More often the two operations are combined in "wet screening" -
that is' the mass is rinsed with the excess water on a screen which
is in continuous motion.
• In large factories the rotating screen is replaced by the shaking
screen. It consists of a slightly inclined, horizontal frame, 4 m in
length and covered with gauze, which is put into a lengthwise
shaking motion in short strokes by means of an eccentric rod.
The fresh pulp, after being mixed with water in distribution
tanks, is conducted by pipes to the higher end of the screen;
during screening, the pulp remaining on top of the screen is
slowly pushed downward by the shaking motion.
Cassava starch processing technology
RASPING OR PULPING
• Hand and mechanical rasping.
– A simple but effective grater is obtained by perforating a sheet of
galvanized iron with a nail and then clamping it around a wheel with
the sharp protruding rims of the nail openings turned outward. The
wheel may be driven by hand, but it is often driven by foot like a
tricycle, the worker pressing the roots from above onto the rasping
surface.
• Engine-driven raspers
– The most current model is the Jahn rasper. The machine has a rotor
of hardwood or drawn steel tube, 50 cm in diameter, with a number
of grooves milled longitudinally to take the rasping blades or saws.
The number of saw teeth on the blades varies from 10 to 12 per
centimetre according to need. The blades are spaced 6-7 mm apart
on the rotor.
Cassava starch processing technology
SETTLING AND PURIFICATION OF STARCH
• The term "settlings' as used here includes the whole series of operations for
separating the pure starch from soluble contaminants.
• The diameter of cassava starch granules ranges between 4 and 24 microns:
thus. a gradation according to granule size has to be expected in
successively deposited layers of sediment.
• Settling takes at least six hours; thus, after rasping which is carried out
early in the morning, the supernatant liquid is let off in the afternoon.
However, rasping is often carried out late in the morning, and in that case
the flour is left to settle overnight, up to 20 hours or more. Though settling
is more complete in this case, the action of enzymes and microorganisms
may also have progressed.
• The upper layer of sedimented flour, which has a yellowish green tint,
contains many impurities and is generally scraped off and rejected. The
remaining moist flour is then stirred up with water and left to settle again.
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Cassava starch processing technology Cassava starch processing technology
FINISHING AND PACKAGING
DRYING
• Bolting
• Sun drying – Crude dry cassava flour consists for the greater part of hard
• Drying ovens lumps of starch.
– As it is useless for most purposes in this form, it has to be
• Chamber drier
subjected to a pulverizing process followed by dry-screening.
• Drum driers – The latter operations are often referred to as bolting.
• Bell driers
• Tunnel driers • Storing and packaging
– The finished starch should he stored in a dry place, preferably
• Pneumatic driers on a board floor or in bins. where it can he mixed in order to
obtain a uniform lot.

Processing procedure Processing technology

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The end!

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