The cassava starch market experiences one of the readiest markets amongst all the end products derived from cassava. The global cassava starch market alone was valued at USD 40.53 billion in 2018 and it is projected to rise to USD 66.84 billion by 2026.
Being one of fundamental products the food industry, the textile and the apparel industry, the brewery industry, carpentry sector, cosmetology, confectionaries, and pharmaceuticals depend on, cassava starch is always on high demand.
With the use of machines like the cutting machine, rasper, hydro-cyclone, flash dryer and the cassava cleaning machine millions of dollars can be made from cassava starch.
. How to meet the demand to attain the millions of dollars of its ready market has always been the question. Let’s have a look at the step by step procedure involved in the process of turning cassava into starch.
Cassava Roots
Cassava Roots Cassava must be gotten from fresh cassava. If you do not possess that fresh cassava, they can be bought from growers in the neighborhood. The cassava should not be stored for more than two days but should be received as soon as possible after harvest. This is important because the presence of woody matter of stones may interrupt with the process of rasping. In other to prevent this totally, the woody ends of the cassava roots must be chopped off before any other process takes place.
Peeling
The peeling stage removes the skin and the cortex of the cassava root and only leaves the central part of the cassava. In some bigger factories the whole root is processed but to be on a safe side, it is advisable to chop off the parts mentioned and leave the soft textured part (the core part). The roots are then cut transversely and longitudinally to a depth corresponding to the thickness of the peel which can then be easily removed. If this process is not carefully followed, the washing and rasping stage will be interfered and lesser starch will be gained
Washing
The success of this process is dependent on the success of the peeling stage. If peeling is done well, the leftover dirt on the central part of the root can now be washed off easily and safely. The washing stage continues by immensely putting the peeled roots into cement basins. These roots are left there until the resumption of the rasping stage. The mechanical washer or the rotary drum can effectively wash off any dirt on the peeled cassava roots. The frequent treading by foot also cleans out any leftover dirt.
Rasping
Having 70 to 90 percent of starch released in this stage, the rasping stage determines largely the total amount of starch that will be gotten at the end of the whole processing. All cell walls are ruptured to release the starch granules by biochemical (roots are left to ferment and pounded to a pulp, starch is then washed from the pulp with water) or mechanical action (roots are sliced and then rasped, grated or crushed to get a fine pulp).
In this stage, the roots are pressed against a speedily moving surface with sharp protrusions, the cell walls then tear up and the whole root is turned into a mass in which the greater starch granules is released. The pulp in most cases undergoes a second rasping after screening in order to extract more starch. The rasping process is carried out in divers ways; hand and mechanical rasping, hydraulic raspers, engine-driven raspers, power consumption during rasping, variations in resistance of the roots to rasping and secondary rasping or grinding.
Screening
Separating the free starch from the pulp becomes the focus here. A liberal amount of water is added to the pulp as it is delivered by the rasper and the resulting suspension is stirred energetically before screening takes place. Screening and mixing with water can be done individually or simultaneously. In most situations, the two are combined in a procedure known as “wet screening” (the mass is rinsed with the excess water on a screen in continuous motion).
Hand screening introduces screening done by hand. The rasped root mass is then placed in batches on a fabric that is connected to four poles and hanged like a bag over the drain going to the sedimentation tanks. A pipe above the bag delivers spring water or cleaned river water, and the pulp is forcefully churned with both hands. The screening fabric is sometimes supported by bamboo basketwork. The pulp under processing still retains significant amount of starch and hence has some use in small mills, where it is squeezed out by hand and dried on racks in a well-ventilated environment. Aside hand screening, other methods include rotating screens, shaking screens, and the Dorr-Olivier DSM screen.
Setting And Purification
The entire sequence of processes for isolating pure starch from soluble impurities is included in this step. The quality of the flour produced is largely determined by how well these procedures, which include settling in consecutive tanks, settling on flour tables, and the action of contemporary separators, are carried out. Each operation can be used independently or in various combinations. They all produce a starch suspension in pure water that is more or less concentrated.
Sedimentation
Large cassava factories utilize refining in tanks and on tables as part of their sedimentation operations. Separation by centrifuging, though practiced in the starch industries using potato and maize as raw material, does not seem to have found wide application with cassava during this period. Since then, more effective centrifugal separation and cleaning methods for starch have been developed. Although initially intended for the processing of potato and maize starch, more traditional machines and centrifuges are increasingly being used in the cassava sector, and it is likely that they will soon replace other methods at greater production levels.
Dying
Mechanical methods can be used to remove free water from starch sediment collected in settling tanks and on flour tables, as well as concentrated slurries generated by separators and purifiers. Evaporation, whether in the open air (sun drying) or in ovens, must always be used for the ultimate drying. After the dewatering process, the air drying will dry the starch to the required moisture of the commercial starch.
Starch extraction has never been this easy. As a farmer who wants to make millions of dollars in the sector, extracting starch from cassava for sale on the ready market can be a way to go.
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