The Spinning Cone Column can be used to collect and concentrate flavour / aroma compounds contained in:
- Product condensate (typically derived from evaporation processes)
- Essence (from evaporator-linked essence recovery systems)
One commercial application of this is concentration of water phase apple essence.
The concentration of apple essence from evaporator-linked essence recovery systems can be between 40 and 150 fold, depending on the system parameters. The SCC may be used to further concentrate this material up to 4,000 fold. At such high concentrations, an essence oil may be recovered. Essence oil is a separable phase consisting of aroma compounds that have exceeded their solubility limit in water.
A 150 fold apple essence was concentrated using the Spinning Cone Column. The concentration of select compounds in the concentrated essences is shown in Table 1. Several important points were noted as a as a result of this work:
- The essence was concentrated by a factor of 28. That is, all aroma compounds were concentrated into a volume 28 times smaller than that of the feed.
- There were no volatile compounds in the SCC discharge in concentrations above 1 ppm; all volatile compounds were captured in the concentrated essence stream. This includes trans-2-hexenal, a particularly desirable compound in apple essence and concentrated apple essence as it imparts a typical 'green' characteristic.
- No aldehyde oxidation compounds were detected in the concentrated essence. Such compounds impart undesirable characteristics to essences and are generally formed by degradation reactions occurring result of extended exposure times to high temperatures (typical of conventional essence concentration systems).
Click here to find out more about the Spinning Cone Column.
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