Grant: Alliance Grants

Increased human population and change in dietary patterns have led to a surge in the demand for protein. Subsequent increases are expected in the coming years based on reports from the Protein Industries Canada. Plant based proteins (from pulses and cereals) have been considered to be a direct substitute to animal-based protein due to dietary, socio-cultural and environmental concerns. However, to utilize protein from plant sources, these proteins need to be efficiently and effectively separated from their source crops. Existing methods for the separation of plant-based proteins from their parent material often requires dissolution in solvents and the use of chemicals for their extraction and isolation. These 'wet' methods therefore tend to cause a certain level of contamination and denaturation of the original protein constituent while also causing deleterious environmental and economic impacts. This research, therefore, proposes a novel dry fractionation technique which avoids the use of any solvent or moisture in the separation of the protein from the cereals and pulses. Thus, no contamination or adverse environmental effects will result from using the proposed technique. The aim of this project is to develop a novel tribo-electrostatic separation (TES) technique for the dry fractionation of protein-starch from pulses and cereal flours. This technique has been employed in industries such as the mining, waste recycling and pharmaceutical industries but not anywhere in the agri-food industry. In this project, the chargeability of certain cereals and pulses would be investigated, and the effects of parameters such as feed flow rate, quantity of charge, electrode plate angle and distance on separation efficiency and functional properties of the resulting protein will be studied. The optimization of these process parameters will also be carried out during the second phase of the project while a scale-up to a pilot scale will be explored during the final phase of the project. The results and findings from this project will benefit the industrial partners and the Canadian food processing industry at large, via the development of a dry separation technique to produce a high-grade plant-based protein without the bottlenecks associated with the existing wet fractionation process. This will also increase the commercial value and could position Canada as not only a world class exporter of pulses but also as a major exporter of high purity fractionated plant-based proteins.