Bio-refinery of solid raw materials for food purposes

Introduction
Nowadays, the bio-refinery of for example soy protein is mainly focused on high purity and general applicability. In existing fractionation processes, toxic solvents (hexane ect.) and various pH changes are implemented to obtain purified fractions. To stabilize the protein a drying step is applied. The drying step not only requires a lot of energy, but also leads to loss of most of protein native functionalities.

However, for many food applications, high purity might not always be an advantage. It has been observed that soy concentrate, unless the lower protein purity, creates better fibrous structures than soy isolate. This indicates that the techno-functionality is not only attributable to the purity but mostly through the protein state and functionality and the presence of other components. The focus during the bio-refinery should be less on purity but more on functionality. Using mild fractionation less pure native protein fractions are obtained. Mild fractionation can, therefore, increase the applicability due to improved technical properties.

Objective
The objective  of this project is to develop mild bio-refinery processes, to obtain novel fractions with the desired technical properties and functionalities. The process should be efficient with natural resources and the native functionalities should be preserved. The novel fractions will have a less general application, but will be more product specific.

Approach

Develop and optimize mild bio-refinery processes to obtain non-pure novel fractions. The novel fractions are target to a specific type of product. The functionality of the obtained novel fractions will be demonstrated using model products. Within the model product, the novel fraction should substitute (multiple) ingredients without changing the (structural) properties. 

BSc / MSc Thesis
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