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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #73988
Title: COMPARISON OF LABORATORY AND PILOT-PLANT CORN WET-MILLING PROCEDURES

Author
item SINGH, S - ISU
item JOHNSON, L - ISU
item POLLAK, LINDA
item FOX, S - ISU

Submitted to: Cereal Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/15/1996
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Wet milling of corn is an important industrial process that yields hundreds of products, including starch, ethanol, and sweeteners. It may be possible to develop specialty corn hybrids that wet mill more efficiently, thus more cheaply. In order to screen corn lines for their wet-milling potential, a simple laboratory method using a small amount of corn (100 g) was developed. The objective of this study was to compare the 100 g procedure to an accepted more complex laboratory method that uses 1 kg of corn, and a pilot-plant method using 10 kg of corn. Three normal and one waxy corn hybrids were used. The 100 g method gave acceptable results for starch yield and protein content. The results indicate that the 100 g method can be used to screen lines for breeding purposes. This procedure will make it possible to develop hybrids especially bred to be efficiently wet milled. These results will be of most interest to those working in the corn processing industry and to corn geneticists.

Technical Abstract: One waxy and three regular yellow dent corn hybrids were wet milled by using two scales of laboratory (modified 100-g and 1-kg) procedures and a pilot-plant (10-kg) procedure. The modified 100-g and 1-kg laboratory procedures gave similar yields of wet-milling fractions. Starch yields and recoveries were significantly lower for the pilot-plant procedure, whereas gluten and fiber yields were greater because of their high contents of unrecovered starch. Protein contents of the starches obtained by all three procedures were within commercially acceptable limits. Rankings for starch yields and starch recoveries for the four hybrids, having very different physical and compositional properties, were the same for all three procedures. The harder the grain, the lower the yield and recovery of starch. Least significant differences for starch yield were 0.8% for the modified 100-g procedure, 1.2% for the 1-kg procedure, and 2.0% for the pilot-plant procedure.