OPTIMIZATION OF PROTEINS RECOVERY PROCESS FROM CHEESE WHEY

A. CUELLAS, R. JAGUS AND J. WAGNER

Congreso; International Congress on Engineering and Food (ICEF 11).; 2011

Cheese production generates a great amount of cheese whey, which could contribute to a negative environmental impact of the cheese manufacturing plant if not adequately treated. Hence, there is an increasing need to develop methods for making use cheese whey, a nutritional by product, in order to avoid the negative environmental implications and to give a better economic return. The most important cost-effective utilizations of cheese whey are valorization technologies, such as recovery of protein and lactose from whey. Whey proteins are widely used in the food industry due to their high nutritional quality, desirable sensory characteristics and high techno-functional potentiality. The aim of this work is to optimize the process to obtain a protein-containing ingredient from the remaining whey of Argentinean “Cuatriolo” cheese production. In order to optimize the protein recovery, physical and chemical treatments were evaluated. The protocols were designed with different sequences of application of heating step and acid addition. Also the presence or absence of fat and CaCl2 were evaluated on the yield ([precipitated proteins/whey proteins]x100), water retention (proteins precipitated wet weight/proteins precipitated dry weight) and particle size (determined by laser diffraction). The results showed that the highest yield of the process (76.6%) and an increases in water retention (39.85 w/w) are achieved when the acid is added after boiled and incubated for 30 min at 90 ºC. On the other hand, the yield of protein recovery is related to the particle size of the aggregates, increasing the particle size increases the recovery of proteins. In these working conditions the presence of calcium shows a lower yield of recovery (72.8%) and this correlates with a smaller particle size. Additionally, the presence of fat also reduces the particle size, decreasing the performance of the process (69.4%). The presence of fat and CaCl2 increase the amount of water retained in the aggregated protein (47.62 w/w), nevertheless the alone presence of fat does not modify the water retention of the sample. Therefore, the process of aggregation in whey protein should take into account both the design of suitable protocol such as the presence of fat and additives. We conclude that the optimization of the aggregation process allow to reduce the volume of effluent from the cheese industry and get new protein ingredients for use in the food industry.