REFINING OF EUROPEAN WHEATS FOR PRODUCTION OF HIGH-QUALITY PRODUCTS FOR THE PAPER INDUSTRY

Información del proyecto

CASCADE

Identificador del acuerdo de subvención: FAIR961105

Fecha de inicio 1 Octubre 1996

Fecha de finalización 30 Septiembre 2000

Financiado con arreglo a

• Specific research, technological development and demonstration programme in the field of agriculture and fisheries (including agro-industry, food technologies, forestry, aquaculture and rural development), 1994-1998

Coste total € 4 030 000,00

Aportación de la UE € 1 900 000,00

Coordinado por

THE ROYAL VETERINARY AND AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY
Denmark

Exploitable results

Cascade refining of European wheats

The project involves the scaling up of a vertically integrated chain for the production of cheap and high quality modified starch wheat flours for the paper industry. This included the development of a closed cycle production system for modified starch wheat flours to ensure that all production steps are environmentally friendly, ensuring full utilization of the raw material and a positive socio-economic impact on society. Two wheat varieties were selected for the density grading tests, one variety with a high starch content and one with a normal/low starch content. A number of wheat samples of different varieties have been selected for milling trials. From the previous trials it has been shown that the low protein Dutch variety Ritmo obtains positive characteristics when milled in a conventional wheat flour mill plant. A set of optimal processing parameters were defined for the chemical modification process. Various varieties of wheat flour with different granulation have been milled and chemically modified. The modified wheat flour has been used as the starch component in paper coating and as the binding component between layers of fibre. So far a problem of using modified wheat flour seems to be the fine material retention, since it shows a lower performance than the reference potato starch. Quality can be predicted by spectroscopic fast screening of the modification degree (chemical substitution). It has been possible to predict (fast screen) the degree of modification with a correlation of 0.99. Tests have shown that a higher concentration is needed for modified wheat flour to obtain the same rheological properties as the potato reference starch. The storage stability is better for the reference starch than for the modified wheat flour. The degree of chemical substitution is proportional to the viscosity and the stress factor was higher for the modified wheat starch gel than for the reference starch gel.