Proteins from potatoes

Danish custom separations specialist Upfront Chromatography has supplied its Rhobust technology to a plant that extracts functional proteins from potato processing waste. The plant at Gasselternijveen/Netherlands has capacity for 1,000 t/y; a planned expansion to 10,000 t/y would make it the world’s largest industrial protein chromatography installation by far. The plant is operated by Solanic, a business unit of AVEBE. The Rhobust platform, based on second-generation expanded bed adsorption (EBA), enables the recovery of high-value functional proteins from low-value, high-volume raw materials. The columns operate at atmospheric pressure and can handle high flowrates without the need to clean the waste beforehand. Upfront’s proprietary mixed-mode ligand chemistry captures and releases functional proteins simply by changing the pH, and the system is tough enough to withstand cleaning with hot NaOH solution.