Chemicals must be added to conventional starch liquefaction enzymes to raise pH levels before liquefaction. Chemicals are added again at the end of the process to ensure the lower pH for the next step in starch processing, saccharification.
“LpHera brings the liquefaction pH level as low as 4.54.8. This means you can reduce your use of pH chemicals in some instances by more than 50%,” says Thomas Nilsson, global launch manager for food at Novozymes. “It also prolongs the ion exchange service cycle, which saves chemicals, water and wastewater.”
Liquefaction with LpHera also increases dextrose yields by 0.2% . This can be a significant increase when processing high volumes of starch.
“Starch plants vary in size and can process from 0.2 to over 1Mt of substrate each year,” says Thomas Nilsson, "So if a plant processes 0.5Mt of substrate, the additional yield coupled with the energy, water and chemical savings associated with LpHera means that such a plant can save up to $0.5M [£299,745] per year, compared with today's technology.”