JP2007186552A - Method for producing porphyran - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To produce porphyran from dried laver while remarkably decreasing the energy consumption necessary for the heating of laver, reducing the size of the production facility to reduce the installation cost, and increasing the production efficiency to reduce the production cost e.g. by shortening the production time and provide porphyran at a reduced price. <P>SOLUTION: Discolored dry laver is put into a closeable bottle and steamed until the laver is completely changed to green color. Water is added to the heat-treated dry laver and the obtained fluid is left at rest in a vessel. The fluid is separated into an extracted liquid containing porphyran and a residue by solid-liquid separation with a centrifugal separator, and the extracted liquid is filtered with a ceramic filter to obtain a concentrated extracted liquid. The concentrated extracted liquid is charged into a spray drier to obtain pulverized porphyran. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a method for producing porphyran. More specifically, the amount of energy required for heating the seaweed for production is dramatically reduced, the production equipment is downsized to lower the equipment cost, and the production efficiency is increased to lower the production cost. It relates to what can be provided at low cost.

  Porphyran is a kind of high molecular weight polysaccharide containing a sulfate group extracted from the algal body of the red seaweed Amanori, and occupies about 30% of the dried seaweed mass. Porphyran is expected to be used in various fields such as foods, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals due to its various usefulness for physiological functions such as water retention and UV-opacity. Here, the seaweed belongs to the red seaweed belonging to the genus Amanori, and refers to Susabinori, Asakusanori, Danshaku, Upruinori and the like.

  There are various methods for producing porphyran, but many of them include a step of first extracting dry nori such as plate nori with hot water to obtain an extract containing porphyran (see, for example, Patent Document 1). The thing of patent document 1 adds acetic acid and calcium acetate to what concentrated the hot-water extract, adjusts pH appropriately, then adds ethyl alcohol, and leaves it to stand to form a precipitate. This is a method of dehydrating with 100% ethyl alcohol after washing with 80% ethyl alcohol.

Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-60003

However, the conventional methods including the porphyran production method described in Patent Document 1 have the following problems.
That is, in the process of hot water extraction of dried seaweed such as plate seaweed, it is necessary to use a larger amount of water than the amount of dried seaweed and boil it for a relatively long time (for example, 1 to 24 hours). . In this process, not only does it take a long time to raise the temperature to boiling and lower the temperature to room temperature, but a great deal of energy is consumed, which lowers the productivity of porphyran and raises the production cost. It is a factor.

In the hot water extraction step, a large amount of water is added to the dried nori, so that the amount of the mixture increases and becomes very bulky. For this reason, when the processing amount of dry seaweed is used as a standard, a large capacity of heating containers are required, and further a large work space is required. It will be expensive.
As a result, the production cost of porphyran increased as a result, and porphyran could not be provided at low cost.

(Object of the present invention)
The purpose of the present invention is to drastically reduce the amount of energy required for heating the nori for production when producing porphyran from dry nori, so that the equipment cost can be reduced by reducing the size of the production equipment, Furthermore, it is possible to provide porphyran at a lower cost by increasing production efficiency and reducing production cost, such as shortening the time required for production.

Means taken by the present invention to solve the above problems are as follows.
In the first invention,
A method for producing porphyran from dried nori,
The process of heating and steaming the dried nori in the sealed container for the required time,
A step of adding a required amount of water to the heat-treated dry nori to obtain a fluid, followed by solid-liquid separation into an extract containing porphyran and a residue,
It is a manufacturing method of the porphyran characterized by including.

In the second invention,
A method for producing porphyran from dried nori,
A process of heating and steaming dry nori in a sealed container and having a moisture content of 1 to 10% based on the weight of solid content at 100 to 130 ° C. for a required time;
A step of adding a required amount of water to the dried nori that has been heat-treated to form a fluid, and solid-liquid separation into an extract containing porphyran and a residue using a centrifuge;
It is a manufacturing method of the porphyran characterized by including.

In the third invention,
Comprising a step of concentrating an extract containing porphyran,
It is the manufacturing method of the porphyran which concerns on 1st or 2nd invention.

In the fourth invention,
Characterized in that it comprises a step of pulverizing porphyran contained in the extract,
It is the manufacturing method of the porphyran which concerns on 1st, 2nd or 3rd invention.

The “dried seaweed” referred to in the present specification and claims refers to red seaweeds of the genus Amanori, as described above, and include Susavinori, Asakusanori, Danshaku, Upruinori and the like. In addition, the form is not particularly limited. For example, raw nori is dried without heating (unheated dry nori), paper-like nori (heat-treated dry nori: also called plate nori) Is included.
“Dried seaweed” does not mean that there is no moisture at all, and it goes without saying that it contains some moisture, but the moisture content is not particularly limited. In addition, for example, in the case of plate nori, it includes everything from high-grade nori on the market to low-grade nori on the market. Furthermore, it includes crushed plate nori or nori seaweed having a moisture content equivalent to that of dry nori.

For example, the moisture content of high-grade plate seaweed that is on the market as a raw material or low-grade plate seaweed that is not on the market is usually manufactured in the range of 5 to 10%.
Needless to say, in order to destroy the cell wall of hard nori with less energy and extract porphyran in the cell wall, which is the object of the present invention, the lower the water content, the less energy is consumed. Porphyran can be extracted by the production method of the present invention even in dried laver, for example, plate laver having a moisture content of 1%.

For example, when the moisture content of the dried laver is high, a step of drying the dried laver as a raw material can be provided as a pretreatment in order to set the moisture content of the dried laver to, for example, 1 to 10% with respect to the solid content weight. As a drying method in this case, various drying methods such as a method of heating in an open container, a method of drying in the sun, and a method of blowing air can be employed.
In this step, if the moisture content of the dried nori is less than 1%, the moisture content is too low to make it difficult to steam and to extract porphyran, which is not preferable.

  The upper limit of the moisture content is not particularly limited, but if the moisture content is too high, a large amount of heating energy is required, the efficiency required for the extraction of porphyran decreases, and red algae (phycoerythrin) dissolves in the water. Since the whole tends to be browned, the water content is more preferably 1 to 10%.

  If the temperature at which the dried nori is heated is less than 100 ° C., the cell walls of the nori tend to be hard to break and difficult to extract porphyran. The upper limit of the temperature is not particularly limited, but when it exceeds 130 ° C., the polysaccharide containing porphyran tends to have a low molecular weight due to the influence of heat. Therefore, the heating temperature is more preferably 100 to 130 ° C.

  It is important to perform the heat treatment in the present invention in a sealed container. When heated in an open container, the extraction rate of porphyran is low regardless of the water content, which is not suitable. As the principle of porphyran extraction in the present invention, it is speculated that the water contained in the dried laver is heated to become water vapor, which plays the role of the extraction solvent in the extraction. In the case of an open container, it is difficult to contact dry seaweed and water vapor. In order to make it steam with steam, it is preferable to heat the dried laver in a sealed container.

  The ratio or amount of water added to the heat-treated dry nori is preferably, for example, soft mud to improve production efficiency, but is particularly limited if water can be added to provide fluidity. do not do. Moreover, after adding water and melt | dissolving dry laver and making it a fluid body, it applies to a centrifuge and a press dehydrator, However, Time until it applies is not specifically limited. In order to extract and separate porphyran, it is preferable to take some time, such as several minutes to several tens of minutes. Furthermore, the fluid can be stirred and kneaded in order to extract more porphyran.

In the extraction of porphyran, dried laver can be dried in a drying facility and then sealed in a predetermined amount in a sealed container, or previously put in a container that can be sealed and dried by various means and sealed. It is also possible to adjust and supply moisture so that the humidity in the container is equal to or less than the saturated water vapor amount.
In a normal state, the dried laver contains about 1 to 10% of water. In addition, in order to extract porphyran from dried seaweed, it can be extracted with a small amount of water. As a result, the humidity in the container may be low, and a moisture amount that does not accumulate in the container, for example, a steam state is most suitable (moisture exceeding the saturated water vapor amount accumulates in the container).

  If a large amount of water is added to dry seaweed or the humidity in the container is high, water becomes a medium and works to some extent for the extraction of porphyran, but much heat energy is required for heating the steam, and the processing time Also gets longer. Further, if the time for steaming at a high temperature in the container becomes too long, the productivity will deteriorate and the seaweed will be altered and the quality will be reduced. Therefore, as an optimal extraction method, it is preferable that the humidity in the sealed container is in the range of the saturated water vapor amount or less.

  Furthermore, it is better that the dried seaweed is in the form of a plate seaweed or is slightly crushed. Finely ground seaweed (especially fine powder with a diameter of 0.5 mm or less) has cell walls destroyed, so impurities are dissolved in the extract, and protein components are easily altered and easily spoiled. This is not preferable in terms of production cost because production facilities are sophisticated.

  As a method for extracting porphyran from the extract, it is efficient and preferable to use various filters such as a ceramic filter. Other methods such as boiling or using ethanol can also be employed.

  As a method for pulverizing porphyran contained in the extract, it is preferable to employ, for example, a spray drying method (spray drying). According to the spray drying method, the dry air is discharged upward by the cyclone, and the solid content containing porphyran accumulates downward, so that powdering can be efficiently performed. Other drying methods such as freeze-drying (freeze drying) can also be employed.

(A) In producing porphyran from dried nori, the heating process before adding water to the dried nori to make a fluid does not use much water. The amount of energy required for the heating can be drastically reduced, and the time required for temperature increase and decrease can be shortened.
Moreover, the dried laver to be heated does not become bulky as much as water is hardly used in the heating process. As a result, if the amount of seaweed used as a raw material is used as a standard, it becomes possible to further reduce the size of a device including a sealed container to be heated, and further improve the space efficiency. Cost can be reduced.
Furthermore, coupled with the fact that the time required for temperature rise and temperature fall can be shortened, solid-liquid separation is performed by a centrifugal separator or a press dehydrator, thereby enabling efficient production in a short time. From such a thing, the production cost of porphyran can be reduced and porphyran can be provided at low cost.

(B) By a heating process in which the water is steamed in an airtight container with little use of water, for example, even if the dried laver as a raw material turns reddish purple or brownish brown and has a poor color, a red pigment ( Phycoerythrin) and indigo pigment (phycocyanin) are denatured and the pigment breaks, leaving a heat-resistant green pigment (chlorophyll), which changes to green, the original color of laver.
After that, the color of the seaweed is the natural green color that is inherent to the seaweed and stabilizes, so that when the seaweed remaining after extraction is used for food such as sprinkles, the value of the seaweed can be increased as a natural food. it can.

(C) The thing which includes the process of concentrating the extract containing porphyran, or the process which pulverizes the porphyran contained in an extract can be made into the form which can utilize porphyran as an additive, such as a drink and food, respectively. . In addition, a powdered porphyran is excellent in storage stability and is easier to use even when used at home.

  The present invention will be described in detail based on examples.

  Porphyran was produced from dried nori as follows.

(1) 360 g of plate seaweed having a slightly reddish purple color as a whole was prepared as a raw dried seaweed. The moisture content relative to the solid weight of the dried seaweed was 5%.
(2) The dried laver was placed in a hermetically sealed bottle and heated at a temperature of 120 ° C. for 30 minutes. In the inside of the sealed bottle, the moisture contained in the dried seaweed became steam, and the steaming process was practically performed. As a result, the color of the seaweed changed and the whole was green.

(3) The heat-treated dry laver was transferred to another container, 6.1 L of water was added, and the mixture was allowed to stand for 60 minutes. The seaweed was dissolved by the addition of water, and the mixture of seaweed and water became a soft mud fluid.
(4) The fluid produced in this manner was centrifuged to separate the liquid and the extract containing porphyran into solid and liquid. As a result, 4.2 L (4.2 kg) of an extract and 2.26 g of a residue containing water were obtained. And the pH of this extract was adjusted to 4.5.

(5) The extract containing porphyran was filtered through a ceramic filter (500 mm) and concentrated. As a result, 1.4 L (1.4 kg) of a concentrated extract was obtained. In addition, the filtrate which passed the ceramic filter was returned to the residue.
(6) The concentrated extract was poured into a spray-drying type spray dryer to powder porphyran contained in the extract. This gave 75 g of porphyran powder. Moreover, the time required for all processes was 16 hours.

(Discussion)
According to the above method, 75 g (about 21% by weight) of porphyran was obtained from 360 g of dried nori. Assuming that about 30% by weight of porphyran is contained in the dried nori, it is 70% of that, and it was found that the dried nori can be produced with a very high extraction rate. In addition, it was possible to produce porphyran in a relatively short time by performing a long time for the operation and without performing hot water extraction which consumes a large amount of energy and further performing solid-liquid separation with a centrifuge. Thereby, it has confirmed that the said manufacturing method had the outstanding low cost property and productivity combined with the said high extraction rate.

  In addition, the heating process of steaming the dried nori in a sealed bottle with little water used changed to green, which is the original color of the nori, and after that, the original natural green of the nori was exhibited and stabilized. In addition, by drying and crushing the nori residue containing water remaining after extraction, it was possible to produce a powder that could be used for food such as sprinkling. This powder had a natural green color similar to the above residue, and was able to enhance the value as a natural food made from seaweed.

(Comparative Experiment 1)
(1) 360 g of plate seaweed having a slightly reddish purple color as a whole was prepared as a raw dried seaweed. The moisture content relative to the solid weight of the dried seaweed was 5%.
(2) The dried seaweed was put in a jar and heated at a temperature of 120 ° C. for 30 minutes in a thermostat set as an open container without closing the cap. As a result, there was no change in the color and properties of the seaweed.
(3) The heat-treated dry laver was transferred to another container, 6.1 L of water was added, and the mixture was allowed to stand for 60 minutes. Both dispersions obtained a red-colored dispersion as a whole, but the seaweed was dissolved by the addition of water, and the mixture of seaweed and water became a soft mud fluid.

(4) The dispersion thus prepared was subjected to a centrifuge and subjected to solid-liquid separation into an extract containing porphyran and a residue. The extract was ultrafiltered with a centrifugal filter with an ultrafiltration membrane (Ultrafree Biomax-5K manufactured by Millipore) that cuts off at a molecular weight of 100,000 Da to obtain a permeate. The sugar concentration contained in the extract and permeate was measured by the anthrone-sulfuric acid method, and the porphyran concentration in the extract was obtained by subtracting the sugar content of the permeate from the sugar content of the extract.
(5) The porphyran content obtained by the above method was compared with the porphyran content of the extract obtained in the step (4) of the above example.

  FIG. 1 is a graph comparing the sugar content contained in the extract produced in the porphyran production process between the method described in the present invention and that carried out in an open container.

(Discussion)
As can be seen from FIG. 1, unlike the present invention, the extract obtained from the dried laver heated in an open container at 120 ° C. has a lower porphyran concentration compared to the present invention and is about the same as the untreated product. It was. From this result, it was found that in order to achieve efficient porphyran extraction, heating under dry seaweed was necessary.

(Comparative experiment 2)
Next, in the steps in the above examples, a comparative experiment was conducted regarding the contents of carbohydrates and proteins contained in the extract obtained from the dried water nori as the raw material with different moisture content and the heating temperature. .

  The relationship between the quality of the extract and powder containing porphyran and the content of carbohydrate and protein can be explained as follows. When there is much saccharide | sugar contained in an extract, it means that the extraction rate and content rate of porphyran which is high molecular weight polysaccharide are high. Moreover, when there is little protein, the transparency of an extract will become high, it will be easy to use it for various products, and it will become difficult to cause decay and discoloration. Therefore, it can be said that the higher the sugar content in the extract and the lower the protein content, the better the quality of the extract and powder containing porphyran.

  In order to conduct a comparative experiment, four types of dried laver with different moisture contents were prepared. The water content relative to the weight of each solid content was 1%, 3%, 5%, and 10%. Furthermore, they are divided into four parts, heated with 96 ° C hot water and different moisture content, Group A with no water addition, heated at 106 ° C with different water content, Group B with different water content, and heated at 120 ° C without water addition. Different C groups were heated to 130 ° C. without adding water and divided into D groups with different water contents (see Table 1).

  In addition, the seaweed used in the experiment is a standard dry-seasoned drying method that is generally used, and the dried seaweed is used as a standard. Then, the experiment was conducted with laver having a specified moisture content.

  Each sample (16 samples) heated under the above conditions was immersed in warm water of 40 ° C. and allowed to stand for 1.5 hours. These were then centrifuged to obtain an extract containing porphyran. The amount of carbohydrate and protein contained in each extract was measured and compared. In addition, content was represented by the density | concentration (mg / mL) which is a measured value (refer FIG. 2, FIG. 3). Here, the carbohydrate was measured by the anthrone-sulfuric acid method, and the protein was measured by the Raleigh method.

FIG. 2 is a graph showing the content of carbohydrates contained in the extract produced in the production process of porphyran according to heating temperature,
FIG. 3 is a graph showing the protein content contained in the extract produced in the production process of porphyran according to heating temperature.

(Discussion)
As can be seen from FIG. 2 and FIG. 3, unlike the present invention, the extract of Group A obtained by heating by immersing in hot water at 96 ° C. has a saccharide (porphyran) content compared to the other groups. And the protein content was the highest. That is, it turned out that the quality of the extract obtained from the A group is inferior to the B group, the C group, and the D group according to the present invention.

  In addition, the B group, the C group, and the D group according to the present invention are partly exceptions (the C group having a water content of 10% in the carbohydrate data and the D group, and the C data having a water content of 3% in the protein data. Group and group D), the higher the heating temperature, the higher the sugar content, the lower the protein content, and the higher the quality.

  Note that the terms and expressions used in the present specification are merely explanatory and not restrictive, and do not exclude terms and expressions equivalent to the above terms and expressions.

The graph which compared the content of the saccharide | sugar contained in the extract made in the manufacturing process of porphyran with the method as described in this invention, and what was implemented with the open container. The graph which represented content of the carbohydrate contained in the extract made in the manufacturing process of porphyran according to heating temperature. The graph which represented content of the protein contained in the extract produced in the manufacturing process of porphyran according to heating temperature.

Claims (4)

A method for producing porphyran from dried nori,
The process of heating and steaming the dried nori in the sealed container for the required time,
A step of adding a required amount of water to the heat-treated dry nori to obtain a fluid, followed by solid-liquid separation into an extract containing porphyran and a residue,
A process for producing porphyran, comprising: A method for producing porphyran from dried nori,
A process of heating and steaming dry nori in a sealed container and having a moisture content of 1 to 10% based on the weight of solid content at 100 to 130 ° C. for a required time;
A step of adding a required amount of water to the heat-treated dry nori to obtain a fluid, followed by solid-liquid separation into an extract containing porphyran and a residue,
A process for producing porphyran, comprising: Comprising a step of concentrating an extract containing porphyran,
A method for producing a porphyran according to claim 1 or 2. Characterized in that it comprises a step of pulverizing porphyran contained in the extract,
A method for producing a porphyran according to claim 1, 2 or 3.

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