Enhancement of sugar content through progressive freeze concentration: effect of initial concentration

Abstract

A new concentration technique is required to eliminate portion of water from coconut water (CW) and reduce the cost of storage, handling and shipping. As Progressive Freeze Concentration (PFC) could retain the nutritional compounds, it was applied to concentrate CW and enhance its sugar content. In PFC system, only a single block of ice is formed as a layer on the cooled surface. A coil stainless steel crystallizer was used as FC unit to investigate the enhancement of sugar content in CW. The effect of initial concentration of CW was then investigated on the performance of the PFC system through the Effective Partition Constant (K) value and increment of sugar content. It was found that lower initial concentration yielded lower K, which is favourable and high sugar content. The best K achieved was of 0.3101 and the highest sugar content increment acquired was 53% with the range of initial concentration investigated (3 to 5%Brix).