Product-driven process synthesis for the extraction of oil bodies from soybeans

• A Novel product-driven process synthesis methodology is proposed.
• Quantitative aspects are connected to qualitative aspects by quality function deployment.
• A New route for the isolation of proteins from soy combining enzymes and ultrasound is presented.

In this contribution the Product-driven Process Synthesis methodology was used as a well-defined structured approach for the conceptual design of an extraction process for the isolation of intact oil bodies from soybeans. In the first part of this work, the product-related design stages of the Product-driven Process Synthesis methodology were addressed. The concept of House of Quality was used to link both design spaces and additionally to map the product attributes onto product properties. Further, we identified the fundamental tasks to convert raw materials into a final product which led ultimately to two alternative process flow-sheets. These process flow-sheets were not obvious and hence were experimentally verified. In this work, we demonstrated that the process alternative based on combined enzymes and ultrasound improved the purity of the final product, and reduced processing time. For the selected alternative, we defined the operating window and developed an overall process design.