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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BHNRC) » Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center » Food Composition and Methods Development Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #284830
Title: Changes in the phenolic acid content during commercial dry-grind processing of corn to ethanol and DDGS

Author
item Luthria, Devanand - Dave
item MEMON, AYAZ - University Of Sindh
item LIU, KESHUN - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA)

Submitted to: Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/14/2013
Publication Date: 7/1/2014
Citation: Luthria, D.L., Memon, A.A., Liu, K. 2014. Changes in the individual and total phenolic acid content during commercial dry-grind processing of corn to ethanol and DDGS. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. 94:1723-1728.

Interpretive Summary: Increased energy cost during the past few years has increased demand for the use of bioethanol as a fuel additive. Over 600 million bushels of corn are processed by either dry grind or wet milling to produce ethanol. This increased production of bioethanol is accompanied with significant increase in the quantity of its co-product, distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), produced during fermentation of corn by the dry grind process. The results on variations in phenolic acids of the nine fractions (ground corn-1, cooked slurry-2, liquefied slurry-3, fermented mesh-4, whole stillage-5, thin stillage-6, condensed distillers solubles-7, distillers wet grains with solubles-8, and distillers dried grains with solubles-9) from the three corn processing plants will be of significant interests to the corn processors, animal nutritionalists and DDGS end users. As phenolic acids are known to influence the organoleptic (flavor, astringency, and hardness) properties of foods and may have potential health beneficial properties due to enriched phenolic acids content. The results presented in this study will be of significant interests to the corn processors, animal nutritionalists, and DDGS end users.

Technical Abstract: Nine fractions (ground corn-1, cooked slurry-2, liquefied slurry-3, fermented mash-4, whole stillage-5, thin stillage-6, condensed distillers soluble (CDS)-7, distillers wet grains (DWG)-8, and distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS)-9) were collected from three commercial dry-grind bioethanol processing plants. There were significant differences in phenolic acid (individual and total) content in the nine fractions collected from the three processing plants, but the changing trends in all three plants were very similar for both assays. The four phenolic acids identified in all fractions were caffeic, p-coumaric, ferulic, and sinapic acids. Vanillic acid was present in all fractions except fractions 2 and 3. All fractions collected following fermentation, except fractions 6 and 7, had higher concentrations of phenolic acids than fractions before fermentation, with DWG having the highest phenolic acids content.