Enzymatic Hydrolysis as a Way to Recovery Bovine Hides: Laboratory and Medium Scale Trials, Characterization of the Hydrolysates and Scale-Up to Semi-Industrial Scale

Abstract

A current hot topic in the field of environmental protection and development of valuable new products is represented by the recovery of food waste from the meat sector. The present study focused on the recovery of bovine hides by means of a sustainable method. Enzymatic hydrolysis was selected as a potential green methodology for use in the production of protein hydrolysates to be applied on an industrial scale. For this purpose, the enzymatic hydrolysis of bovine hides with Alcalase was investigated following a multiscale approach: lab-scale, medium-scale and semi-industrial pilot plant. Alcalase proved to be highly efficient due to its ability to degrade collagen, the main protein of hides. Under optimized conditions, the hydrolysis of hides at laband medium-scales resulted in approx. 85% protein solubilisation after 6 hours, with a consistent release of free amino acids and a degree of hydrolysis of 17-19%. However, in the pilot plant, solubilisation decreased due to difficulties in mixing bovine hides in the reactor, which was compensated with a longer reaction time to achieve virtually total protein solubilisation (∼98%). The present data therefore demonstrate the applicability of the process at semi-industrial scale in protein recovery with a reduced amount of waste by-products.

Assessing the effect of Maillard reaction with dextran on the techno-functional properties of collagen-based peptides obtained from bovine hides

“…Samples consisting of pieces of bovine skin were provided by Inalca Industria Alimentare Carni SpA (Castelvetro, Modena, Italy) and stored at −20 °C. The hydrolysis process, using Alcalase 2.59 U/g, was carried out according to optimised conditions from a previous study (Anzani et al, 2019) using two sample:buffer (v/w) ratios 1:2 and 1:3 (Supplementary 0). As a result two hydrolysates with DH equal to 17.3 and 19.2%, with an extraction yield of 85% and 82%; and protein content of 80% and 85% were obtained respectively for hydromodule 1:2 and 1:3.…”

“…Collagen can also be used as protein supplement once hydrolysed into peptides and free amino acids (Ferraro, Anton, & Santé-Lhoutellier, 2016). Precisely, because of the many uses of collagen and the need of the meat industry to re-valorise the large amounts of processing co-products generated, innovative strategies have been adopted, as for example the use of Alcalase hydrolysis to recover collagen peptides from hides (Anzani et al, 2019). In this previous work the processing conditions were optimized to maximize the recovery yield of hides' proteins in the form of peptides by means of Alcalase; which was selected based on its ability to hydrolyse the collagen present in this material (Anzani, Prandi, Buhler, et al, 2017;Anzani, Prandi, Tedeschi, et al, 2017).…”

“…In this previous work the processing conditions were optimized to maximize the recovery yield of hides' proteins in the form of peptides by means of Alcalase; which was selected based on its ability to hydrolyse the collagen present in this material (Anzani, Prandi, Buhler, et al, 2017;Anzani, Prandi, Tedeschi, et al, 2017). However, when aimed for high recovery yields, the final hydrolysate presents a very high degree of hydrolysis meaning that it is mainly composed of free amino acids and very short peptides (Anzani et al, 2019); which usually don't exhibit good techno-functional properties (apart of high solubility); as it was also reported by Liu, Kong, Xiong, and Xia (2010) for plasma peptides obtained with…”