Dow Water & Process Solutions Specialized Water Treatment for Foods and Beverages

Today’s global marketplace is filled with a variety of food and beverage options requiring critical process filtration solutions. Through reverse osmosis and nanofiltration systems, ion exchange resins and chromatographic media, Dow Water & Process Solutions helps enable food and beverage manufacturers to create and improve their market offerings.

For more than 50 years, Dow has been a leading supplier of ion exchange resins and resin technology, as well as advanced water purification and separation technologies. In the food and beverage industry, in such key market areas as plant-based sweeteners, dairy products, and refined sugar, Dow helps manufacturers develop better-tasting and more nutritious products, improve the efficiency of their operations, and address increasingly strict regulatory requirements.

All Dow products for the food and beverage industry are designed to meet FDA and other industry regulations. This includes DOWEX™, AMBERLITE™, DUOLITE™ and IMAC® ion exchange resins and adsorbents and DOW FILMTEC™ and DOW HYPERSHELL™ elements.

Ion exchange resins for sweeteners

Corn- and starch-based sweeteners are today’s primary beverage and food sweeteners, but require purification before they can be sold as food ingredients. Dow Water & Process Solutions is the sweetener industry’s leading provider of deashing, chromatographic enrichment, mixed bed polishing, and color removal resin technologies. Dow supplies a wide range of ion exchange resins made specifically for sweetener production, from traditional Gaussian resins to our proprietary DOWEX MONOSPHERE™ uniform particle size resins. Dow resins are also used in the production of specialty polyols such as xylitol, sorbitol and mannitol.

In deashing and mixed bed polishing, specially designed DOWEX™ ion exchange resins remove unwanted ions and other contaminants from the syrup stream. DOWEX™ MONOSPHERE™ resins have been proven to reduce deashing costs by increasing the length of treatment service cycles and reducing regeneration chemical costs.

In chromatographic separation, DOWEX MONOSPHERE™ separation resins facilitate the production of enriched fructose by chromatographic separation of glucose and fructose. In adsorbent decolorization, DOWEX™ OPTIPORE™ adsorbent replaces or supplements traditional activated carbon systems, adsorbing impurities that otherwise would contribute to the formation of color and off-flavors.

Reverse osmosis and nanofiltration elements for dairy processing

Milk components can be separated by membrane processes to form such additional products as cheeses, cultured milk products and whey proteins. In addition, casein or cheese whey is demineralized using ion exchange processes. Dow offers membranes, ion exchange resins and chromatographic media to help process dairy products effectively and cost-efficiently. Various streams are concentrated by reverse osmosis and nanofiltation, saving the cost of thermal evaporation and preventing product quality damages caused by high-temperature processing.

DOW HYPERSHELL™ reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) elements feature an advanced construction technology designed to improve food, beverage and dairy processing. The Dow RO membrane elements provide a more robust structure and reliable performance for dewatering and product concentration, delivering exceptional performance attributes that help lower the costs of dairy processing. Dow NF elements are suited for a variety of desalting, purification and other separations.

Ultra filtration and polymeric adsorbents for beverages

For beverages, Dow technologies are vital for extracting or enhancing flavors and colors, improving clarity and shelf life, and removing undesirable compounds. For example, Dow ion exchange resins deacidify fruit juices (particularly citrus juices) while maintaining the juice’s flavor profile and standard of identity. Dow helps juice producers remove naturally occurring bitter compounds in citrus fruits and improve their yields with a combination of ultra filtration and polymeric adsorbents.

When fruit juices are used for ingredient purposes, such as a neutral base within a designed beverage, or as a supplemental natural sugar source, they must be decolorized. Oxidation of amino acids, polyphenols and color precursors in juice result in color formation. These compounds can be successfully removed without notably altering the juice’s other properties by using AMBERLITE™ FPX66 or AMBERLITE™ FPX68 polymeric adsorbent as a clean and economical alternative to powdered activated carbon.

Membranes, adsorbents and ion exchange resins for nutritional products

Nutritionals are components or derivatives of food products – amino acids, polyphenols and organic acids – that have health benefits or have value in the consumer market. These products are often extracted from whole foods such as green tea or fruit, or generated by fermentation. In all cases, the extract must be separated from its solution and purified. Dow offers a range of membranes, adsorbents and ion exchange resins to help recover, isolate and purify nutritional products.

L-Lysine, an essential amino acid produced through fermentation, is commercially recovered and purified using Dow strong acid cation resins. Organic acids such as citric acid and lactic acids are used as acidulents and preservatives, and recovered at high purity using Dow ion exchange resins. Polyphenols, compounds found in natural foods that provide color and flavor, are commercially removed, recovered and purified using Dow AMBERLITE™ FPX66 polymeric adsorbent. Gelatin, a nutritional produced through collagen hydrolysis, typically has strict quality requirements within industrial, food and pharmaceutical products. Dow ion exchange resins play a significant role in the demineralization and processing of gelatin.