The high-volume/high-viscosity character of many commercially available weaning foods is a major constraint in providing children with enough calorie density. An attempt was made to formulate low-cost, nutritive but bulk-reduced weaning foods using sorghum malt, green gram malt, and sesame flour. The formulations thus prepared were evaluated for functional properties such as particle size, water absorption, dispersibility, hotpaste and cold-paste viscosities, colour, and nutritive value with respect to calories, vitamin C, minerals, and available lysine. The ingredients showed variation in particle size: green gram malt was finer than sorghum malt, and sesame flour was much coarser. The laboratory formulations had finer particle size than a commercial sample. Green gram malt had a higher water-absorption capacity and a lower percentage of dispersibility in water than sorghum malt. The experimental formulations had lower water-absorption capacities and higher percentages of dispersibility than the commercial sample. The viscosities of 10% and 15% gruel concentrations of the experimental formulations were much lower than those of the commercial sample. CSH-I sorghum malt was darker than the other ingredients. Sensory evaluation found the experimental preparations to have good acceptability. A weaning food containing 60% sorghum malt, 30% green gram malt, and 10% sesame flour was found to have satisfactory functional characteristics and nutritive value and is recommended.

Adsorption-desorption isotherm of pedha, a popular Indian milk sweet, wasa smooth sigmoid curve. The equilibrium relative humidity (ERH) of the product was 76% and BET monolayer moisture content 8.73% on dry basis. A negative linear relationship was observed between the logarithm of mold-free shelf-life and ERH at 27 + 1°C in the studied ERH range of 75-92%. Packaging in 100 and 300 gauge low density polyethylene (LDPE-100 and -300) pouches reduced weight loss, browning and free fatty acid (FFA) development, and retarded deterioration of flavor, odor and acceptability of pedha during storage. Peroxide value was not influenced by LDPEpackaging. LDPE-300 was more effective in controlling weight loss, browning and FFA formation than LDPE-100. Film thickness, however, did not influence the organoleptic attributes significantly.

Currently, there is a great demand for highpurity natural tocopherols in food supplements due to their antioxidant and Vitamin E activity. Deodorized distillate (DOD), a by-product of the vegetable oil refining process, is a major source of these natural tocopherols. Isolation of pure tocopherols from DOD is challenging due to their lower concentration and presence of large quantities of polar and hydrophobic components. Several multistep methods are known in the art for the purification of tocopherols from DOD and crude feed stocks. This work presents a single-step tandem reverse phase chromatography method for high-purity tocopherols from DOD containing 4-8% of tocopherols (mixture of α, β, γ, and δ isomers). Tandem chromatography involved two consecutive chromatography columns, in which the first column is operated in frontal adsorption mode for maximum loading with partial removal of impurities and the second column operated in step wise separation mode causing high purity. The Developed tandem two-column process produces 60% and 95% purity tocopherol grades at a high loading of 381 (g of DOD) per (L of resin). The developed method recovers up to 77% of loaded tocopherols in purified form with a productivity of 3.4 g L −1 hour −1 .

BACKGROUND Pyruvic acid and its salts, key chemicals in the bio‐refinery sector, are normally purified in the liquid form mainly through reactive extractions or chromatographic methods. For the isolation of sodium pyruvate, current work explores a repulsive extraction and crystallization method using polar aprotic solvents. RESULTS Because of the high affinity of polar components present in fermented broth towards water and also due to favorable interaction of sodium pyruvate with added solvent, sodium pyruvate allows repulsive extraction from the fermented broth solution. Acetone causes maximum repulsion of sodium pyruvate with reduction of 80% solubility from the fermented solution. Increase in concentration of sodium pyruvate and other components present in fermented broth are responsible for the enhanced extraction of sodium pyruvate in acetone. Initial concentration of 20% by weight resulted in 79% yield of the desired purity sodium pyruvate by repulsive extraction. The whole process involving micro‐filtration, vacuum evaporation, followed by repulsive extraction and crystallization yielded 97% pyruvate purity with overall 75% yield. The lab scale process was scaled by a factor 62, resulting in 900 gm of desired purity pyruvate. CONCLUSION In addition to providing high yield, the suggested process can also reduce the numerous purification steps and purification time for large‐scale production of sodium pyruvate or pyruvic acid. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry

Alpha-tocopherol or vitamin E is an essential food ingredient. Due to high purity requirement in food applications, it is majorly produced in the acetate form through chemical routes. However, the isolation of food grade vitamin E acetate (VEA) is critical due to the co-generation of close characteristic impurities in the production processes. The work undertaken here provides a new kinetic chromatography method for production of food grade VEA. In this work, suitable adsorbent for chromatography separation was selected based on shallow-bed binding-elution characteristics. Loading conditions were identified by frontal adsorption behavior. Kinetic parameters and bed height for the purification was predicted by establishing the relationship between bed height, purity and the relative separation factor (RSF). The RSF of 2.8 and corresponding bed height is predicted from the established relationship for the separation of VEA from impurities. The bed height of 170 cm with isocratic mobile phase of 2% (wt/wt) water in methanol provides 98 wt.% purity of VEA with recovery of 90%. This work has highlighted methodology based on kinetic parameters for the separation of close characteristic impurities from target molecule. This work also provided the application of simple handy tools like RSF and dual wavelength detection for the rapid development of preparative separation process for VEA and other such valuable components from unknown impurities.