An Overview of Glucose Syrup Production Method

Glucose syrup is clear and colorless food syrup made from hydrolysis of corn, wheat, cassava and potato and rice starch widely used as a sweetener in food industry mainly. It is less sweet than cane sugar or sucrose. Glucose syrup is used in huge quantities in bakery products, fruits, crystallized fruits, pharmaceuticals, liquors and brewery products. For glucose production plant, raw materials include starch, activated carbon and HCL acid mainly.

With a converter, slurry of starch of around 60 % water is both prepared and treated with HCL acid. This way, the reaction that takes over at 150 degree centigradeis maintained for 15 minutes. Then the treated slurry is transferred to a tank to be neutralized with NaOH. Then it is filtered from protein before refining by activated carbon for de-coloring. After refining and de-coloring it passes through a plate or candle filter for active carbon removal. Refined and filtered solution goes through Ion exchanger to remove salt and improve de-coloring process. Finally an evaporator is employed to reach desire concentration of glucose.

The choice of glucose syrup depends on applications and customers or end users requirement. Generally , high converted syrup are used as sweeteners. Glucose syrup can be categorized in 4 main categories based on degree of conversion in the glucose production process:

1. Low DE : 25-30
2. Medium DE: 30-50
3. High DE: 50-70
4. Extremely high: 70-98

Generally the following machinery and equipment are used in glucose production acid conversion: starch transportation system, starch slurry making tanks, convertor, filter press, candle or vacuum filter, plate or candle filter , ion exchanger and evaporator .

Other Methods of Glucose Production

There are several methods for glucose making from starch. Acid conversion, enzymatic process and carbon free process. Many parameters have to consider choosing the right process. The following main items have to be considered in choosing the process:

1. Investment
2. Capacity
3. Level of automation
4. Availability of enzyme
5. Glucose quality

Generally, for small processing line and countries which done have good access to enzyme and don’t need very high quality glucose, acid conversion is recommended but for higher capacities, very high quality glucose and high automation, enzymatic or carbon free process is recommended which need more investment.

Author bio: Rose Darani is an experienced market professional associated with a leading engineering company that specializes in advanced starch and glucose production machinery and technology. In this article, she gives an overview of the glucose syrup processing methods and comparing various glucose production methods.