Issue 03/2016

Report
Potato starch in – high value starch out
About 100,000 tonnes per year of side stream starch
could be generated in Europe as co-products of the potato
converting industries. More than 50 % of that amount is
being collected by Novidon and converted into technical
grades for the different applications.
The starch is partly collected by an own fleet of ± 8 trucks
and delivered to the different locations of Novidon. In order
not to transport too much water, the company tries to get
the starches as dry as possible. So starch can be delivered
in a rather dry, powdery format (fig. 1) or in form of a slurry
that is dumped into a bunker by a tanker truck (fig. 2).
This slurry is then processed in several steps. In
different cyclones heavier contaminations such as sand,
protein and fibres, e. g. from potato peels are centrifuged
off. This is followed by a drying process. Figure 3 shows
the filling of the final dried and cleaned product into big
bags. But the starches can also be filled in paper sacks.
Only at this stage the starch is being evaluated in
Novidon’s modern laboratory. Depending on certain
properties a decision for the final field of applications is
made.
Native potato starch to bioplastics
One of Novidon’s customers is BIOTEC in Emmerich,
Germany, about 45 kilometers away. Biotec converts
the native potato starch of Novidon to high quality
bioplastics called BIOPLAST, which are biodegradable and
compostable, and can be used for different applications
such as film blowing (for the production of different
kinds of bags – figure 4) or injection moulding. “This was
something very interesting for us to learn”, says Roel van
Haeren. “Together with Biotec, Novidon achieved to use
their potato starch as a raw material for Bioplastics.” And
Johannes Mathar, Project Manager R&D at Biotec amends
that “potato starch showed to be the best starch for our
bioplastics.” A few years ago Biotec made an evaluation
and compared starches from corn, cassava, wheat, peas
and other sources.
While about 6,000 – 13,000 tonnes (depending on
annually changing availability) of starch are converted into
adhesives, 3,000 – 15,000 tonnes go to oil- and gas drilling
approx. 20,000 – 35,000 tonnes are sold as high value native
starch. 5 – 7 % of this amount goes into the bioplastics
industry, for example to Biotec. With these figures in mind
– in addition to the fact that Novidon’s potato starch is
derived from co-products – it can be clearly stated, that
such bioplastics from starch are in no competition to
food and feed, an extremely durable solution ready for
expansion.
www.novidon-starch.com
www.duyniegroup.com
www.biotec.de
By: Michael Thielen
Figure 3 Figure 4
bioplastics MAGAZINE [03/16] Vol. 11 37