Increase yield and improve product characteristics for yellow and soft cheeses

GEA Filtration has developed a remarkable method of microparticulation that allows cheese makers to create increased yield and improve product characteristics more easily than ever before – by using the by-product.

The concept of MICRO FORMULA™ (microparticulation) is simple – the microparticulation process forms particles similar to milk fat particles. The process is based on heat transfer and friction control where the combination of temperature, time and mechanical treatment (shear effect) is helping the whey proteins to form functional microparticles similar to milk fat particles. In this way the product can be specially customised to the final application. “For example, it can help cheese makers make a low fat product that looks and feels like a full fat product,” Ulrik Lund Jakobsen, Director of GEA Filtration explained.
These functional microparticles are characterised by their creamy, viscous, high binding properties of water and excellent incorporation into dairy and food products.
They can create fat-like solids from whey that are used in the cheese-making process to improve the creamy mouth feel, texture and increase yields, especially of yellow cheese and soft/quark products. Microparticulation can increase yields of soft/quark types of cheeses by up to 20%.
Microparticulation has two different purposes – first of all it utilizes the whey of the cheese, secondly it saves the environment from the impact of waste products and at the same time eliminates the need for removing them. The microparticulated whey product can replace fat or milk protein in many different dairy products.
Focusing on the improved productivity, this new MICRO FORMULA™ technology will make microparticulation available to all small- and medium-sized cheese plants, allowing them to improve yields and engineer unique cheeses to meet their customers’ needs. For a cheese plant with a daily volume of around 50 tons of whey, the return of investment will be less than 5 months after the installation the MICRO FORMULA™ unit.
The specially engineered design of the MICRO FORMULA™ results in heating by friction which enables a very low fouling of proteins. This will maintain the excellent functionality of the microparticles.
This gives, MICRO FORMULA™ a long running time of up to 20 hours a day, less cleaning medium is required, and the downtime is kept to an absolute minimum – all resulting in bigger volumes of processed whey per day. MICRO FORMULA™ is easy to operate and has very low operating and maintenance costs. The unit is designed with ordinary flow components and no special heavy duty equipment such as scraped surface heat exchangers or homogenizers – and furthermore, using the cheese whey by-product otherwise dumped as a damaging waste product, it even has a positive impact on the environment and public health.
Ulrik Lund Jakobsen
Business Unit Director GEA Filtration
GEA Process Engineering
Email: ulrik.jakobsen@gea.com
Web: www.geafiltration.com