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2018 Annual Report
Objectives
1: Enable commercial processes for transforming animal protein into new marketable flocculants.
1a. Develop processing techniques for the solubilization of rendered protein with emphasis on intact proteins and high molar mass protein fragments.
1b. Evaluate technological alternatives for transforming raw chicken blood into a high potency flocculant at low processing cost.
2: Enable market growth for flocculants based on animal proteins by improving their performance and expanding their market applications.
2a. Apply a series of covalent modification strategies to improve blood and rendered protein flocculant performance.
2b. Identify particular application areas to which blood and rendered protein flocculants are well suited.
Approach
Both rendered protein and chicken blood have inherent flocculant properties, but these substances also have other properties which make them unsuitable for commercial flocculant applications in their ‘raw’ state. Poor solubility is a primary obstacle to commercial utilization of rendered protein as a flocculant. Instability, high water content, and dark red color are among the obstacles to blood utilization. The project will focus on developing processing techniques for surmounting these obstacles under Objective 1. With the current state-of-the-art, rendered protein or blood flocculants have significant performance limitations. Improving their performance through covalent modifications is the focus of Objective 2a. Finally, any class of flocculants is well suited to some particular application areas and not to other areas. In Objective 2b, the focus is on identifying particular application areas appropriate for rendered protein and blood flocculants.
Progress Report
This project focuses on improving the performance and commercial viability of experimental biobased flocculants, and creating economic impact by transferring the technology developed to industry. It addresses NP306 Action Plan Component 2, Problem Statement 2.A, “Maintain/increase/enhance non-food product (fiber including hides) quality by developing new or improved postharvest technologies/process efficiencies and reducing processing risk.” Over the past year, substantial progress was made towards each of the project’s active objectives.
The project’s past successes with flocculants have mostly used hemoglobin from slaughter blood. In the current reporting period, progress was made in the effort to extend this success to protein from meat & bone meal (MBM). The research utilized MBM protein that had been modified so that it will dissolve in water, and applied a treatment which successfully enhanced its flocculant properties. This development brings the performance of MBM protein flocculants closer to the very good performance of blood based flocculants.
In a separate study, the same flocculant property enhancing treatment was applied to a variety of animal proteins in order to better understand why it works and whether it will have the desired effect with all proteins. The research revealed that the treatment enhance flocculant properties in two distinct ways. In the first, the treatment causes the protein to take on a different, looser configuration which is better at interacting with suspension particles; this effect is complete within minutes. In the second, the treatment reduces the number of negative charges on the protein, which in turn reduces the repulsion between the protein and suspension particles; this effect is much slower and may take 24 hours or more to complete. The treatment was effective with three proteins used in the research, but a fourth, a milk protein, was rendered insoluble by the treatment.
In the area of practical application of flocculants, studies were conducted using a type of process water from the papermaking process. Papermills can recycle this water if flocculants can remove enough of the contaminants. In research, both whole pig’s blood and purified hemoglobin have shown promise for this application. Further development may provide an opportunity to improve the sustainability of papermaking.
Accomplishments
1. Crosslinking of proteins to produce flocculants. Animal agriculture and meat processing produce a variety of high-protein co-products, including blood and offal, which have relatively low value. Transforming these co-products into a valuable, bio-based product could promote the profitability and sustainability of meat production. ARS researchers at Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania found that linking together protein molecules into giant macromolecules is very effective in removing contaminant particles from water as substitutes for synthetic chemicals that are normally used for this purpose. The linking treatment gives water-cleaning property to proteins that do not normally have it, and increases this property in proteins that have it. This technology can serve as synthetic chemical alternatives.
Review Publications
Piazza, G.J., Lora, J., Wayman, L.I., Garcia, R.A. 2017. Removal of straw lignin from spent pulping liquor using synthetic cationic and biobased flocculants. Separation and Purification Technology. doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2017.07.042.
Garcia, R.A., Bumanlag, L.P., Piazza, G.J. 2017. The relationship between extent of hemoglobin purification and the performance characteristics of a blood-based flocculant. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. 97(14):4822-4826. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.8352.
Essandoh, M., Garcia, R.A. 2018. Efficient removal of dyes from aqueous solutions using a novel hemoglobin/iron oxide composite. Chemosphere. 206:502-512. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2018.04.182.
Essandoh, M., Garcia, R.A., Nieman, C.M., Bumanlag, L.P., Piazza, G.J., Zhang, C. 2017. Practical Limitations of the Dilute Acid Hydrolysis Method for Solubilizing Meat and Bone Meal Protein. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. 5(12):11652-11659.
