A short review on the research progress in alfalfa leaf protein separation technology

作者:Zhang, Wenxiang*; Grimi, Nabil; Jaffrin, Michel Y; Ding, Luhui; Tang, Bing
来源:Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, 2017, 92(12): 2894-2900.
DOI:10.1002/jctb.5364

摘要

Alfalfa leaf protein constitutes an important food ingredient and is widely used in food technology. Due to high nutritive value and high proteins content, alfalfa is widely used in animal and human food. Conventionally, industrial leaf protein production from alfalfa requires complex processing and high separation temperature (90 degrees C), which causes high energy cost, release of sensitive elements and protein denaturation. To overcome these issues, developing novel separation technologies with low energy consumption and high yield and purity is of paramount importance to meet the requirements of green separation. In this review, some separation methods including acid heating method, pH method, salting method, organic solvent method, fermentation method and membrane separation are described. Among them, membrane separation has the best performance. The feasibility of adopting conventional and new promising technology (membrane) to recover leaf protein from plant food materials is discussed from an environmental and economical point of view.