Bioconversions for whey utilization and waste abatement

Cheese making companies have a specific product that is seasonally produced and, like most other agro-industries, generate wastewaters characterized by a high organic loading. Cheese whey is the most important waste stream produced having a high organic content (up to 70 g COD/L), which is highly biodegradable, and low alkalinity (50 meq/L). Cheese production industries worldwide generate more than 145 million tones of liquid whey per year. Because of these characteristics, cheese whey may cause serious environmental problems on the local municipal sewage treatment systems or water receptors if disposed untreated. Anaerobic digestion is a particularly attractive treatment solution for high strength wastewaters due to the operational economy and generation of biogas and therefore is considered as a promising solution for energy production from cheese whey, in this case. In this work, a comparative study between single and two-stage anaerobic treatment of cheese whey was conducted in order to enhance biogas production. Our experiments were carried out using one reactor for the single-stage process (operated at a HRT of 20 d), and two reactors connected in series, from which the first one was used for acidogenesis (operated at a HRT of 3 d) and the other for methanogenesis (operated at a HRT of 20 d). The single-stage process presented many operational problems, as a result of little or no buffering capacity of whey, which caused the pH of the anaerobic digester to drop drastically and the process being inhibited. This kind of inhibition proved to be irreversible and the digester was not able to recover even though it was operated batchwise and the value of the pH was restored to 7.0. On the contrary, the two-stage process exhibited a stable biogas production rate of 1.57 L/L reactor /d with the composition of methane in the biogas reaching 54.3%. The dissolved COD and total carbon concentration removal was 70.5% and 77.2% respectively.

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“…It is highly biodegradable with a very high organic content (up to 70 g COD/L) and low alkalinity (50 meq/L) [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancement of Biogas Production by Using a Two-Stage Process for the Anaerobic Digestion of Cheese Whey

et al. 2017

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“…Ethanol can then be further used as an energy source (as fuel) or to produce vinegar or acetic acid. Several distilleries produce ethanol from whey in Ireland, the USA and New Zealand where about 50% of cheese whey production is fermented to ethanol [55,89]. Cheese whey generally contains carbon and nitrogen substrates (vitamins, fatty acids and sterols) required for microorganism growth.…”

Section: Alcohol Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A wide range of products, summarised in Table IV, can be obtained from lactose or whey fermentation [48,55,56,64,76,89]. According to Atkinson and Mavituna [8] they are classified into 3 categories: (i) high volume -low value: methane, ethanol, biomass, animal feed, water purification, effluent and waste treatment; (ii) high volume -intermediate value:…”

Section: Fermented Productsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The process water of dairy effluents (excluding cleaning in place steps with chemical cleaning agents) is mainly composed of diluted milk and whey in a ratio depending on the type of product (cheese, powder, milk…) of the plant. At the present time part of these fluids are discarded in sewer systems [89,161] or directly used without treatment (Fig. 2): -as animal feed [89,97,159].…”

Section: Dairy Effluentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Developments in whole whey utilisation also focused on the production of alcohols (mainly ethanol) [13,51,81,89,108]. High ethanol yields (about 80%) can be reached from adapted Kluyveromyces fragilis strains.…”

Section: Alcohol Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Non-food applications of milk components and dairy co-products: A review

Audic

Chaufer

Daufin

2003

Lait

183

144

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-Milk contains a lot of different components with their own functional properties and some of them, such as casein, have been used in the manufacture of non-food technical products for many years. The present review deals with the non-food applications of (i) the major individual components of milk: proteins (casein; soluble proteins); lactose; milk fat and (ii) whey, a co-product of cheese and casein manufacture. New applications of milk proteins on a laboratory scale are focused on the manufacture of protein-based films and biomaterials. Also, fermentation of lactose and whey provides low molecular weight compounds and exopolysaccharides. These promising routes for giving added value to dairy co-products and effluents should be applied to achieving a great reduction in dairy industry wastes.Non-food application / casein / lactose / whey / whey protein / milk fat / fermentation Résumé -Applications non-alimentaires des constituants du lait et des coproduits de l'industrie laitière : revue. Le lait est composé de différents constituants présentant chacun des propriétés fonctionnelles caractéristiques et ayant été valorisés dans le domaine non-alimentaire depuis de nombreuses années. L'objectif de cet article est de passer en revue ces applications nonalimentaires pour (i) les constituants individuels majoritaires du lait pris séparément à savoir : protéines (caséines ; protéines solubles), lactose, matière grasse ; et (ii) le lactosérum, co-produit de la transformation du lait en fromage ou en caséine. La fabrication de films et de biomatériaux à base de protéines apparaît comme l'une des applications les plus récentes et les plus attractives. D'autre part, la fermentation du lactose et/ou du lactosérum permet d'obtenir une grande variété de composés de faible masse molaire ainsi que des exopolysaccharides eux-mêmes valorisables. La variété des applications non-alimentaires répertoriées permet d'envisager différentes voies de valorisation pour les co-produits et les effluents de l'industrie laitière dans l'objectif de réduire au maximum les rejets.

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Outside Constraints

Boer¹

2014

From Milk By‐Products to Milk Ingredients

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Bioconversions for whey utilization and waste abatement

Cited by 202 publications

References 29 publications

Enhancement of Biogas Production by Using a Two-Stage Process for the Anaerobic Digestion of Cheese Whey

Enhancement of Biogas Production by Using a Two-Stage Process for the Anaerobic Digestion of Cheese Whey

Non-food applications of milk components and dairy co-products: A review

Outside Constraints

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