ProUpSide - optimization and scale-up of agro-industrial side stream purification

Purpose and goal: We contribute to a plant-based, sustainable and self-sufficient local food industry.

Potato protein concentrate is a by-product from Swedish potato starch production. Despite its high nutritional content, it cannot be used as food due to toxic compounds and bitter off-flavors.

We succeeded in reducing the toxic compounds and also the off-flavors significantly using novel selective resins. The goal of this project is to further optimize the resin-based technology and to demonstrate that the lab-scale process can be adapted to large-scale commercial production. Expected results and effects:

An effective detoxification process for potato protein concentrate will enable the Swedish food industry to economically produce thousands of tons of a plant-based protein product containing all essential amino acids. This novel functional protein ingredient may enable the development of new food formulations opening up the possibility to new spin-off food products or even new food companies.

Approach and implementation:

The project will start with refining the resin-based clean-up process to achieve an optimal process at the lab scale. Based on that, the optimized resin-based process will be scaled-up and evaluated at pilot scale, including analysis of the protein product with initial sensory evaluations, along with regulatory work. The final work package aims at establishing the resin production and detoxification process at larger pilot and finally at industrial scale at a customer site with a more in-depth focus on various nutritional aspects, and sensory properties.