Recovery of Cream of Tartar from Winemaking Solid Waste by Cooling Crystallization Process

Abstract

Our work relates the recovery of potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar) from winemaking solid waste in Algeria. The process consists of crystallizing by cooling, separating and drying the cream of tartar. It uses water as solvent and wine tartar as raw material. This conventional method for the cream of tartar extraction has been carried out in our laboratory using batch process with a charge of 45 liters. For the various process unit operations, simple tools, not expensive and effective are used. Utilization of pipeline water filters with different cartridges (5μm, carbon/ diatomite) has facilitated the key process operation, the hot filtration. Also, we managed to control the dissolution step, so it was monitored by continuous pH and temperature measurements in the agitated vessel, using a pH meter model DDSJ308A. And the crystallization operation was controlled using an infrared turbidity sensor developed in our laboratory.