Progress in micellar casein concentrate: Production and applications

Abstract

Micellar casein concentrate (MCC) is a novel ingredient with high casein content. Over the past decade, MCC has emerged as one of the most promising dairy ingredients having applications in beverages, yogurt, cheese, and process cheese products. Industrially, MCC is manufactured by microfiltration (MF) of skim milk and is commercially available as a liquid, concentrated, or dried containing ≥9, ≥22, and ≥80% total protein, respectively. As an ingredient, MCC not only imparts a bland flavor but also offers unique functionalities such as foaming, emulsifying, wetting, dispersibility, heat stability, and water-binding ability. The high protein content of MCC represents a valuable source of fortification in a number of food formulations. For the last 20 years, MCC is utilized in many applications due to the unique physiochemical and functional characteristics. It also has promising applications to eliminate the cost of drying by producing concentrated MCC. This work aims at providing a succinct overview of the historical progress of the MCC, a review on the manufacturing methods, a discussion of MCC properties, varieties, and applications.

Optimization of Spiral-Wound Microfiltration Process Parameters for the Production of Micellar Casein Concentrate

“…The MF process uses porous membranes with a porosity of 0.1 to 2 µm [2] and is extensively used in the defatting of whey stream in the production of whey protein isolates [3]. The interest in using MF in micellar casein concentrate (MCC) production has increased recently [4][5][6][7][8]. The MCC is produced from the MF of skim milk by permeating most of the serum protein (SP) and non-protein nitrogen components, thereby increasing the ratio of casein to total protein (CN/TKN) and casein to true protein (CN/TP).…”

“…The retentate obtained from this process is a concentrated colloidal suspension [9] containing casein in micellar form, lactose, minerals, and some serum proteins. MCC has been utilized in some applications, such as cheese making [7,10,11], acid curd [12], process cheese [7,[13][14][15][16], imitation mozzarella cheese [17], and Greek-style yogurt [7,18]. MCC has other promising applications, such as nutritional meal replacements, whipped toppings, and coffee whiteners.…”

“…Most of the research on the MF of skim milk for MCC production has used ceramic MF membranes [6,8,19,20]. Ceramic membrane systems are capital intensive, and membrane replacements are expensive [7,21,22]. Compared to these systems, membrane separation systems using polymeric membranes have a smaller footprint, are inexpensive, and are familiar to most of the US dairy processors.…”

“…Compared to these systems, membrane separation systems using polymeric membranes have a smaller footprint, are inexpensive, and are familiar to most of the US dairy processors. In recent years, the interest in assessing the suitability and efficiency of polymeric MF membranes for MCC production has been increased [5,7,21,[23][24][25][26][27]. It has been shown that using ceramic membranes, over 95% of serum protein could be removed in a three-stage process in which diafiltration (DF) to a level of 200% (on the basis of feed volume) was used.…”

“…DF is a process in which water is added to the retentate during MF and further concentration is carried out. This step is intended to improve the serum protein (SP) removal and to control the membrane polarization phenomenon [7,28]. Studies conducted on the use of polymeric membranes for the production of MCC have shown that approximately 40% of SP is removed from skim milk at the first stage of MF [5,21] and the cumulative SP removal increases to around 60% in the second stage, when 200% of DF water is added to the retentate of the first stage [5].…”