Reverse osmosis of whey – Valuable biocomponent of feed and food

Abstract

Whey is a high-quality dairy by-product from cheese industry, being an important source of valuable proteins. It is important in human and animal nutrition due to its content in enzymes, hormones, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidant compounds, it has low lactose content, very little or it is free of lipids, but the dehydration (drying) technique must be very well chosen to preserve the quantity and quality of components. The objective of our study was to analyze the possibility of concentrating whey by reverse osmosis and having in view the possibility to preserve most of the biochemical properties of whey. Thus, we made comparative tests for quantitative determination of total protein, lipids, pH and acidity for – raw, skimmed and concentrated whey. The results showed that reverse osmosis is a good, cheap and easy-to-use method in cheese factories to obtain whey with well-preserved components. Most of the farmers from western Romania (especially in Timis county) use whey as ingredient of feed products. Studies from previous years present whey as an ingredient of nutritional supplements for animal feeding plan, as well as an ingredient in supplements for athletes and alternative medicine. There are many technological options for whey processing, but the final option must be very well correlated with the final nutritional purpose.