Skip to main content
ARS Home » Northeast Area » Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania » Eastern Regional Research Center » Dairy and Functional Foods Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #408488
Research Project: Reclaiming Value from Coproducts of Dairy Food Manufacture

Location: Dairy and Functional Foods Research

Title: A prototype process for demulsification of waste ice cream

Author
item Garcia, Rafael
item LIANG, CHEN - Oak Ridge Institute For Science And Education (ORISE)
item Plumier, Benjamin
item LEE, CHANGHOON - Oak Ridge Institute For Science And Education (ORISE)
item Bumanlag, Lorelie
item Renye, John
item Tomasula, Peggy

Submitted to: International Dairy Journal
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/12/2024
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Ice cream manufacturers must discard a considerable amount of finished and unfinished product despite the product being safe and edible. Potential contamination with food allergens makes it very difficult to salvage this product. Butterfat is one of the most valuable components of ice cream, and it is possible to refine butterfat so that it is safe for allergen sensitive consumers and available for re-use in food production. ARS researchers developed a method for separating the butterfat from waste ice cream. The method involves enzymatic digestion, heating, and centrifugation. The end product resembles butter at room temperature or vegetable oil when warmed and is composed almost entirely of fat. The method recovers most of the fat from waste ice cream and results in only limited damage to fat quality. Ice cream manufactures can adopt this method to mitigate the food loss that accompanies their operation.

Technical Abstract: Recovery of the butterfat in waste ice cream may be an opportunity to mitigate food and economic loss. Previous efforts to recover such fat have succeeded in producing a fat-enriched fraction, but have not succeeded in demulsifying the fat. In the present study, a method involving a sequence of emulsion-breaking steps is shown to be effective for releasing a majority of fat from waste ice cream as free, unemulsified oil. Depending on the test conditions and the variety of ice cream used, typically 59-81% of the fat was recovered, with varying degrees of hydrolytic and oxidative damage. An experiment which omitted individual steps of the fat recovery method demonstrated that each step was required for high recovery. Success with 4 of 5 tested varieties showed that the method has reasonably broad applicability. The results are compared with those achieved using a standardized solvent extraction method.