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Recovery of Lysine from Corn Steepwater

¹U.S. Department of Agriculture, Eastern Regional Research Center, 600 E. Mermaid Lane, Wyndmoor, PA 19038. Names are necessary to report factually on available data; however, the USDA neither guarantees nor warrants the standard of the product, and the use of the name by the USDA implies no approval of the product to the exclusion of others that may also be suitable. ²Corresponding author: Phone: 215-233-6601; Fax: 215-233-6795; E-mail: dobrien@arserrc.gov

One approach to increasing the utilization of agricultural products is fractionation of low-value materials to yield high-value products. In this study, lysine recovery from corn steepwater, an internal processing stream generated in the wet-milling of corn, was investigated. A weakly acidic cation exchange resin was employed to selectively recover lysine from corn steepwater at pH 7.0. In column studies, the product from the ion exchange operation had a lysine content of 4–6% (db). The only other amino acid in the product was arginine. The presence of sodium, potassium, and magnesium ions at significant concentrations in the steepwater limited the lysine content of the product because of competitive adsorption on the resin. The lysine-enriched product reported here is 4–10 times higher in lysine content than other corn milling coproducts and could potentially be useful as a lysine supplement in animal feeds.