Effect of water addition on pectin recovery from solution in centrifugal separation process

Pectin is extracted from plant residues frequently available as by-product of economically more valuable food processing and is widely used for different applications. In industrial process, separation of the hydrolysed pectin solution is performed by centrifugal and filtration technologies. In this paper, the effect of water addition to the hydrolysed citrus peels slurry on the separation efficiency was investigated, with the aim to improve pectin recovery. Different dilution ratios were tested and it was found that the pectin recovery increases when increasing water addition passing through a maximum value. No relevant effects on pH and pectin yield were found when increasing the contact time between water and hydrolysed slurry, confirming that no further progress of hydrolysis or extraction processes is caused by the dilution. Therefore, the increase in pectin recovery can be attributed only to the water addition.