Danisco says UHT fouling fixed with new enzyme

Fouling is a daily challenge for the dairy industry, caused when caramelised proteins separate from milk and milk-based products during heat treatment and form deposits on the surface of plate heat exchangers. This results in back pressure build-up in the system, which can often only be eradicated by shutting down the UHT unit for cleaning.

Danisco said its new FoodPro Cleanline enzyme is available in liquid form and is added to the milk without any need for amendments to processing methods.

The company said the enzyme significantly reduces a processor’s need to use cleaning chemicals and dairies can benefit from a capacity increase of up to 15 per cent due to the longer intervals between cleaning cycles that it enables.

The enzyme should be of interest to the industry as increasing raw material and production costs continue to eat away at the dairy industry's margins, and processors are under greater pressure to ensure their plants are both economically and environmentally sustainable.

Capacity benefits ​

Aart Mateboer, food enzymes business unit director at Danisco told DairyReporter.com that its enzyme is unique in the market and has been successfully tested at commercial dairy facilities over the past six months.

He said that, employing patented technology, the enzyme works by modifying the phospholipase naturally present in milk and is more effective than any chemical in terms of limiting the ability of milk proteins to settle on the heat exchanger.

“Our dairy expert saw the need for an ingredient that would cut downtime for dairy processors by at least one hour.​

“The actual reduction of chemical usage by a processor using this enzyme depends on the type of equipment at the facility and how well it is maintained, but generally, FoodPro Cleanline should result in a dairy processor only having to undertake one cleaning per day as it removes the need for the intermittent washdowns​,” continued Mateboer.

Costs ​

He maintains that FoodPro Cleanline is effective at just 100ml of enzyme solution to 10,000 litres of milk, and he said that Danisco has the capability to produce it in large quantities, thereby making it an affordable way of overcoming UHT milk fouling.

And Mateboer claims that tests showed that the enzyme is deactivated after it does its job and therefore becomes just another protein in the final milk product.

He said that the enzyme, by interacting with the lipids in the milk, improves emulsion stability and also results in an 80 per cent reduction in free cholesterol.

“The enzymation of milk with FoodPro Cleanline leads to a decrease of surface tension and thereby increases efficiency in the homogenizer, while removal of cholesterol from the fat globule membranes increases the viscoelasticity of membrane,”​ explained Mateboer.

Furthermore, he added, the increased protein incorporation in fat globule membrane increases resistance against coalescence, but without increased tendency to flocculation.

Registration is still ongoing in some countries, but the enzyme is set to have a global roll out, added Mateboer.

UHT market​

According to the biannual report, the Tetra Pak Dairy Index, the market share of unpackaged milk, between 2005 and 2008, fell by 1.8 per cent but Ultra High Temperature (UHT) varieties posted stronger growth.

Tetra Pak says that UHT milk, which can be shipped and stored free from preservatives and without refrigeration, has increased its own share of the market by 3.2 per cent.

UHT products are expected to maintain growth in the coming years, with the company estimating CAGR of 5.2 per cent up to 2012, amounting to 70 billion litres.