Regeneration of the solvent during the extraction of protein compounds in the food industry

Pectin - a water-soluble substance contained in the cell juice of fruits and vegetables. It has important biological properties. It contains free hydrocarboxyl groups of galacturonic acid, which are able to bind heavy metals into insoluble complexes with subsequent excretion from the human body. It is used for the production of jams, marmalade, pastilles, preserves, marmalades, as well as for increasing the viscosity of juices.

When processing apples, a lot of nutrients get into juice with pomace. 20% of the pomace is processed into pectin. The pomace is crushed and transferred to the extractor. Soluble substances are extracted in the extractor with hot water acidified with sulfurous acid. After separation, the solid fraction is pressed, and the liquid fraction is treated with enzyme preparations. Next, the resulting pectin solution is precipitated with 95% ethyl alcohol acidified with hydrochloric acid. The formed pectin precipitate is filtered, dried and crushed. The filtered ethanol solution is recovered for reuse.

BTS-engineering company a unit for the regeneration of ethyl alcohol in the production of pectin of TV-FRUT LLC was developed and installed. The solvent (ethanol) recovery unit is an element of the pectin production line from the waste of the apple juice (concentrate) production line. The selected technological scheme for the regeneration of the solvent provides for the separation of water and dry organic substances from it by distillation (strengthening) to certain indicators of the concentration and quality of ethanol.