Caracterização dos minerais presentes no licor de maceração do milho através de análise em ICP-OES

Abstract

Corn steep liquor is a raw material used in several fermentation processes, due to its source of nutrients, such as carbon, nitrogen, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and other compounds present in the medium. Despite the great advantage of using corn steep liquor as raw material, there is a challenge regarding the seasonality between batches, which is directly related to products’ conditions and concentrations in different seasons, which leads to a variation between the fermentation processes. The objectiv e of this work is to characterize in detail the minerals present in the corn steep liquor through the ICP-OES analysis. Therefore, eleven samples of CSL were collected over time, between 01/10/2022 and 03/10/2022. They were stored by the end of collection at -20ºC and subsequently analyzed in order to demonstrate that there is variability between batches, which can significantly impact different fermentation processes. The results obtained confirmed variation. The biggest difference was observed in the concentrations of calcium, iron, zinc and vanadium.