Okara
Okara is by-product of soya milk/bean curd production and is soya residue. It has little demand in a food market and it goes bad quickly. Most of them are destroyed as an industrial waste of which cost is a large defrayment for a manufacturer of soya milk/bean curd. Thanks to the worldwide health boom, soy-milk market in western countries is rapidly expanding. However, the problem of industrial waste stays the same as Japan. Commercialization of the high nutritive by-product would lead to save discard cost and image up of the company. Drying of a by-product is a big theme all over the world. Our direct heating flash dryer, Drymeister, has been delivered to soya milk manufacturer in the world.
Note:
As a machine manufacturer, Hosokawa Micron Malaysia does not sell any Okara Powder.
CONTENTS
Difficulty to process the by-product (Okara) exists in handling high moisture content of 80%. It quickly decays, and its heavy weight and sticky nature makes it difficult to process. Because of these difficulties, among the annual production of Okara, less than 5% is used as an ingredient for food, 45% is used for animal feed or fertilizer, and remained 50% is destroyed by incineration.
Flow for production of soy milk and Tofu
However, the healthy effect of a by-product from soybean is high. Therefore, there is a big advantage to apply it for food ingredient, fertilizer, or animal feed
References table of Okara components
Merit of recycling a soybean by-product
1. Reduce cost of discard: US$200 to 300/ton, annually ten to hundred thousand US$
2. Profit from selling recycled product (food, fertilizer, and animal feed)
3. Environmental friendly business
4. Better company image
For recycling Okara, it has to be dried and ground to suit for transportation and storage. The Drymeister is the most recommendable dryer for this application. Fine dried product can be obtained continuously at the short process time without any sticking problem.
System
Drymeister is provided with the milling part at the bottom and the classifier at the top of the dryer. Hot air is induced to the bottom of the machine. Three operations; milling, classifying and drying are conducted simultaneously. Feed material is milled and classified in the hot air stream. Fine and dry particles pass through the classifier, and the product is collected by bag filter. Drymeister has strong milling power, so the particle size and moisture content can be controlled easily. The product from Drymeister fulfills the requirements listed below for food and for high value-added recycling product.
• Color and flavor – Short drying time without heat damage
• Improvement of food texture – Fine milling by strong milling force
• Long storage life – Low moisture content by high drying ability
• Inhibit bacterial increasing – Less adhesion and easy cleaning. Shortened process by one-pass operation.
Fine grinding of dried product improves the solubility of nutrition and accelerates the digestion absorption. It conceals the further possibility for new value-added application.
Schematic figure of Drymeister
Flow of Drymeister