On the production of glucose and fructose syrups from cashew apple juice derivatives

The cashew crop is an important agro-economic activity in many equatorial areas, although less than 10% of the cashew apple production is exploited industrially. This work focuses on two aspects: obtaining food-grade syrups from cashew apple juice and studying fixed bed adsorption dynamics to separate fructose from glucose. Syrups obtained by concentrating clarified cashew apple juice under vacuum showed similar characteristics to a reference food-grade syrup, with a higher content in fructose, which may contribute to a higher sweetening power with less caloric intake. Adsorption equilibrium studies were performed with synthetic solutions of fructose and glucose by frontal analysis under the concentration range found in the syrups (10–120 g/L) at 30, 40 and 60 °C, using the cation exchange resin Dowex MTO 99Ca. Fructose was more strongly adsorbed than glucose, with measured selectivities ranging from 1.50 to 2.25. Resistance to mass transfer was significant and thought to be due to resin crosslinkage. Glucose and fructose breakthrough curves using cashew apple syrup as feed were practically identical to those measured with synthetic solutions, which leads us to believe that high-fructose syrups may be readily obtained by using current continuous chromatographic units, such as SMB.