KMC Pilot Plant for modified starches
Development of new modified starches or optimization of already existing products involves numerous tests in the laboratory before the result is a useable product. And the process is rarely solved just by testing in the laboratory because the starch does not perform the same way when the production takes place in a 2 kg bucket or in a 50 ton tank.
It is therefore necessary to be able to simulate the conditions in a 50 ton tank before you attempt a production on that scale. Large scale test productions take up production capacity and they use a large amount of raw material. If the test does not result in the expected product you are left with a large amount of starch that at worst cannot be used for anything at all.

KMC has therefore established a small scale modification plant. In other words we can simulate all the process steps that you find at KMC’s “big” modification plant. We can imitate all the modified starches that we produce at the modification plan, KMC Derivat, on a smaller scale, i.e. 50-500 kg at a time.

The different processes are

• Suspending the starch
• Modifying the starch using various agents
• Washing the starch
• Filtrating the starch on vacuum filter
• Drying the starch to final product quality

The individual process systems are flexible and that makes it possible for us to adjust the systems to new tests or to test new starch processing methods.

This test plant – or KMC Pilot Plant as it is called - is also of benefit to our customers. It is now possible for us to offer larger quantities of sample products for testing at the customer’s facilities. In many cases new products are developed in close cooperation with the customer and it is therefore necessary that the customer also can test the product on a larger scale and not just in the laboratory.