Concentrated food systems for sustainable membrane-based fractionation processes

对工业食品加工的可持续性和环境影响的日益关注，反对创造高价值食品成分的新挑战，同时使用更少的不可再生能源，更少的饮用水，以及最大限度地减少产品损失和浪费。基于乳的蛋白质成分已经商业化了几十年，并且在工业规模上以纯化形式制备大多数单个乳蛋白的技术选择是可用的。然而，所有这些方法目前都需要使用一些化学品，但最重要的是，它们依赖于大量的水进行稀释和/或渗滤，以达到所需的蛋白质纯度。如今，乳制品加工商越来越多地通过反渗透（RO）预浓缩乳制品液体，以降低运输成本并减少下游加工所涉及的体积。虽然预浓缩减少了对环境的总体影响，但浓缩食品系统的物理化学和功能特性在很大程度上得到了改变。我们的研究计划的长期目标旨在了解和使用浓缩系统的特定物理化学特性，以开发用于分离复杂蛋白质混合物的新加工方法。我们的假设是，膜分离可用于设计浓缩物，其中不同的现象如溶解度变化、蛋白质聚集、脂质-蛋白质相互作用和盐沉淀可被增强/控制，并用作分离助剂以改善分馏过程。1)表征物理化学性质的变化，如蛋白质溶解度、聚集和高浓度系统中的蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用。* 2)确定增强蛋白质去稳定化或某些乳清组分聚合并使其能够分离的物理化学条件;*3）确定浓缩-渗滤和渗滤模式的组合以优化纯化;*4）将针对乳清蛋白开发的策略应用于酪蛋白浓缩物以分离单个酪蛋白。*我们的研究计划将产生可持续的替代品，以改善乳制品成分的生产。通过结合基础和应用研究，该计划将为高素质的人员提供独特的培训机会，他们将受益于STELA乳品研究中心独特的研究环境和与乳品行业的联系。

The growing concern about sustainability and environmental impact of industrial food processing opposes new challenges to create high-value food ingredients while using less non-renewable energy, less drinking water, and also, minimizing products losses & waste. Milk-based protein ingredients have been commercialized for decades and technological options to prepare most of individual milk protein in purified form at industrial scale are available. However, all of these approaches are currently requiring the use of some chemicals, but most importantly, they rely on large amounts of water for dilution and/or diafiltration in order to reach the desired degree of protein purity. Nowadays, dairy processors are increasingly pre-concentrating dairy fluids by reverse osmosis (RO) to decrease transportation costs and reduce the volumes involved in downstream processing. While pre-concentration decreases the overall environmental impact, physicochemical and functional properties of concentrated food systems are largely modified.****The long-term goal of our research program aims at understanding and using specific physicochemical characteristics of concentrated systems to develop new processing approaches for the fractionation of complex protein mixtures. It is our hypothesis that membrane separation can be used to design concentrates in which different phenomena such as solubility changes, protein aggregation, lipid-protein interactions and salts precipitation can be enhanced/controlled and used as separation aid to improve fractionation processes.****1) To characterize the changes in physicochemical properties such as protein solubility, aggregation and protein-protein interaction in highly-concentrated systems.****2) To identify the physicochemical conditions that enhance protein destabilization or polymerization of some of whey components and enables their separation;****3) To identify combinations of concentration-diafiltration and diafiltration modes to optimize purification;****4) Apply the strategy developed for whey proteins to casein concentrates for the separation of individual caseins.****Sustainable alternatives for improving the manufacture of dairy-based ingredients will be generated by our research program. By combining fundamental and applied research, this program will provide unique training opportunities for highly-qualified personnel who will benefit from a unique research environment at STELA Dairy research Center and contacts with the dairy industry.******