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Starch is
the second most common biological material on this planet, after cellulose.
In fact, starch provides about 75% of the energy consumed by human beings. Starch is also a very important substance within the plant kingdom. Plants store starch in the form of small grains, and deposit these in their seeds, tubers and roots where this starch serves as an energy reserve. Although starch is present in an almost infinite number of plants, industry recovers starch from only a few of them, mainly the potato, tapioca, maize and wheat. Most potato starch is produced in Europe, although small quantities are also produced in Asia. To produce potato starch, you use a special kind of “starch potatoes” that contain 17–20% starch, compared to normal edible potatoes that contain about 10% starch. Recovering potato starch on an industrial scale is a relatively simple process. You wash and grate the potatoes; the starch is then extracted from the cells by means of centrisieves resulting in pulp and starch milk. The starch milk then undergoes repeated washings in hydrocyclones or separators. This removes the last traces of the cell residues, allowing you to achieve a very high level of purity. A rotary vacuum filter dewaters the starch milk, which now contains about 40% moisture. Following the dewatering, a flash dryer dries the starch, and the water content is reduced to 20%. The potato starch has now completed the production cycle and is transported into a large-volume storage silo, ready for packing. In both the food and non-food industries, the finished potato starch plays a major role as a stabiliser, binder, texture agent, gelling agent, filler, etc. Native potato starch – unmodified – features a number of advantages compared to cereal starches such as corn and wheat. Among these are the fact that native potato starch provides higher viscosity, a more transparent gel when cooked, and a more tasty product. Although you can benefit from using such unmodified starch in a lot of applications, it does have its limitations, and is not the best kind of starch for foods with a low pH value, processes involving high temperatures and/or long cooking and heavy mechanical treatment. To deal with these limitations, KMC has for years been producing a range of modified starches that are specially customised for use in such applications. Further development work on modified potato starch is constantly in progress, extending our product range even further. |
