Abstract:

Today, understanding physico-chemical factors affecting the complexation between coagulant and protein granules for protein separation is of great interest to the finding of novel coagulants and the reasonable utilization of whey protein. The effects of different factors such as final cetyltrimethyl ammol/lonium bromide (CTAB) concentration, pH, temperature, whey protein concentration and ionic intensity on the complexation between CTAB and whey protein were dealt with for finding the best complexation conditions. Final CTAB concentration was found to be the most important factor. pH had no significant effect on CTAB/whey protein complexation. At different pH values, the complexation was significantly affected by temperature. In a range of 0 to 200 mmol/L, higher ionic intensity resulted in a decrease of CTAB/whey protein complexation. However, increasing whey protein concentration affected the complexation in a positive way, resulting in an increase of protein recovery.

Key words: whey protein, CTAB, electrostatic interaction, physico-chemical factors