Membranes in corn wet milling

Our program is focusing on the application of membrane technology into the wet milling system. Our work also is studying the nutrient value of the resulting products and coproducts when processes are changed. Because membrane technology can reduce the amount of energy used in drying coproducts and can more accurately separate nutrients than conventional methods, we use membranes as an essential tool in process engineering. New methods of combining and dewatering coproduct streams from the wet milling process to increase their value are currently being developed. These methods strive to simultaneously: 1) Increase wet milling process efficiency and 2) Improve coproduct nutritional quality. In a multidisciplinary effort, the present work couples engineering design to improve the efficiency of the process with nutritional aspects to determine the improvement in nutritional quality of non-conventional coproducts. From a nutritional aspect, other work has studied the nutritional value of conventional wet milling coproducts as animal food ingredients. Some key points of our approach to process development are: System integration, not unit operation, Recovery of nutrients from process streams, Removal of water from coproducts, Reduction of energy and maintenance, Recycling of water.