Description
Diverse uses of Starch make it a very versatile product. Maize or
Corn Starch is a typical cereal starch with distinctly low protein
and ash contents. Its carbohydrate content of high purity makes it
useful in several industries.
Starch occurs in nature in many ways. Maize contains about *6% of
starch, which can be separated from other ingredients by various
processes such as steeping, grinding, purifying and drying. The
physio-chemical and functional properties of starch exhibit a wide
variation with slight change in the production parameters. One of
the important properties is the viscosity of starch slurry.
Normally, starch has near neutral PH. With an increase in the PH,
viscosity of starch tends to increase, thus making it possible to
have diverse uses. This is commonly known as High Viscosity Starch
and is used in the textile industry for sizing.
Maize Starch exhibits all the properties of native starch with some
special features such as non-foaming & non-thinning
characteristics of boiling solution. Hence maize starch has a
marginal effect on the efficiency in weaving and paper industry.
Where high viscosity starch is used, it imparts higher tensile
strength to the fibre and thus improves the sizing. The remarkable
advantage over tapioca starch is short cooking time of less than an
hour and uniform smoothness of paste. The foaming is low even at
high pH. The starch deeply penetrates into the fibres making it an
ideal choice for sizing and finishing.
Combined with resins, starch produces a permanent finish. Good
binding capacity results in its use as a good filler and binder in
tablets. It is also a vital additive for most of the adhesives due
to these properties. In slurry, it provides body to food products.
It also helps in retaining the viscosity of foods. Besides this, it
is excellent filler in cosmetics by virtue of its smoothness in dry
form. It also participates in Maillard's reaction in presence of
proteins and thus gives the brown colour in bakery products.
