Abstract
Potato liquor, a byproduct of potato starch production, is steam-treated to produce protein isolate. The heat treated potato liquor (HTPL), containing significant amounts of organic compounds, still needs to be further treated before it is discarded. Presently, the most common strategy for HTPL management is concentrating it via evaporation before using it as a fertilizer. In this study, this scenario was compared with two biotreatments: (1) fermentation using filamentous fungus R. oryzae to produce a protein-rich biomass, and (2) anaerobic digestion of the HTPL to produce biogas. Technical, economic and environmental analyses were performed via computational simulation to determine potential benefits of the proposed scenarios to a plant discarding 19.64 ton/h of HTPL. Fungal cultivation was found to be the preferred scenario with respect to the economic aspects. This scenario needed only 46% of the investment needed for the evaporation scenario. In terms of the environmental impacts, fungal cultivation yielded the lowest impacts in the acidification, terrestrial eutrophication, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication and freshwater ecotoxicity impact categories. The lowest impact in the climate change category was obtained when using the HTPL for anaerobic digestion.
Highlights
Potato is one of the most important food crops in the world, and it accounts for 13.3% of the starch produced in the European Union (EU)
19,641 kg/h of heat treated potato liquor (HTPL) are pumped to a boiler operating at 2 bar to concentrate the HTPL to potato protein liquor (PPL), which contains approximately 40% (w/w) solids
The current study highlights the environmental benefits of cultivating fungi in the HTPL, since it has the lowest impact in acidification, freshwater ecotoxicity as well as the terrestrial, freshwater, and marine eutrophication categories
Summary
Potato is one of the most important food crops in the world, and it accounts for 13.3% of the starch produced in the European Union (EU). The processing of potato to produce starch results in two major byproducts: potato pulp (PP) and potato liquor (PL). PP contains the insoluble polysaccharides cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin and residual starch. Minerals and trace elements in high concentrations, are the major ingredients of PL [1]. Each metric ton of processed potato yields approximately 200 kg of starch and generates ca 700 kg PL [2] containing 30–41% protein per total solid (TS) [3]. The proteins present in the PL are of good quality, similar to those of whole eggs [3]
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