Starch-Based Sweeteners

Starch sugars are a group of starch derivatives that are used as natural sweeteners in food and beverage products and as components in markets such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics or in the bioprocess industry as for fermentation processes. Starch is extracted from agricultural raw materials such as corn, wheat, sorghum (milo), cassava (tapioca) in a wet milling plant. The liquid extract (starch milk), is treated in several steps to split up the sugar components to produce starch syrups such as glucose, high fructose or maltose syrup. The manufacture of the syrups requires numerous process steps such as wet milling, liquefaction/saccharification, clarification/filtration, decolorization, ion exchange, and concentration, and thus effective management of the processes, particularly filtration, is critical to producing an economical final product.