whey processing

From liquid whey to whey powder, does anyone know the process?

How are the big supplement companies processing it and is it most whey from the by product of making cheese?

If I found a source for 1000's of litres of liquid whey could I find a market for that?

Whey is a byproduct in the dairy industry and already comes as a dry raw product which the supplement companies buy from them

As far as I understand the liquid whey needs to go through different filtration processes to get the excess fat etc etc out, different processes will even seperate the enough to get casien out.

So if the supp companies are buying it as powder already then I must try find out from the diary farms what they are doing..

Thanks

MikeM1 wrote: If I found a source for 1000's of litres of liquid whey could I find a market for that?

Basic supps already does that, I believe. I have seen ads from dairies on gumtree selling bulk whey powder, so I doubt you'd need to complicate the issue by going for liquid whey.

Thanks!

You are 100% is that the initial by-product is in liquid for but it is processed and sold as a powder by the dairy companies.

Cool, now I want to find out how to process all my liquid whey into powder to sell.. If there is a shortage of whey then surely there is some money in it for me.

Would consuming liquid whey be the same as powered whey, macro wise?

It would depend on what filtration process is used and what gets taken out.. So my off the hat answer is no, you may end up with a little more protein but you would also end up consuming a lot more fat than you would want.

Don't you think it will be difficult to get large quantities of liquid whey if there's a shortage?

But go for it - the more cheap sources there are, the better for all of us.

Eidolon, that was my question but friends of ours have a cheese farm, they said I can have their liqiud whey.. Apparently its thousands of litres but I'm not sure of the ratio eg 10ltrs = 1kg whey etc. Also I don't know the expense involved in the process that's why I asked if there is maybe a market for it in liquid form. Also it doesn't sound as easy as getting whey from a dairy farm, there is sweet and sour whey. I'd still have to try make a batch of whey powder and then get it tested to even see if the protein content is high enough etc.

So ja seems like quite a process and this may be why there is a shortage, people don't have the knowledge, equipment or capital layout to get this going.

I suspect it will be similar to the process of making powdered milk. I'll ask the process engineers at Clover and report back.

awesome, thanks Vega!

They dry the liquid whey by spraying it with misting nozzles into the top of a "silo" like oven. The heat evaporate the water and the powder fall to the bottom where it is collected.

The drying process is not the problem, but the real issue is removing the excess lactose ect.

I believe the whey Clover and Dairy Belle produce here in South Africa is not suitable for human consumption because they didn't refine the liquid whey. We used to buy it for use on the farm, think it was R10-R25 per 50kg.

The whey that clover sell for supplements and food products are imported from New Zealand and Australia.

I'm pretty sure this will be such an expensive process to setup that you are better off importing whey or buying it from clover fonterra. I used to buy 300kg at a time to sell here before I let basic supplements take over. They deliver for free if you buy 100kg or more and it's far less hassles than producing your own.

We paid R80000 for a secondhand pasteurizing machine and then it isn't even a big one. These refineries and drying ovens will set you back a couple of million rand.

thanks Admin, this is why I wanted to do the research..

Mike if you like the idea of creating your own whey google something like "Making whey protein from Yoghurt" or something similar.

You won't get much out of it but you'll have a lekka experiment.

thanks Ondier, I was hoping to produce on a higher scale but sounds like it will be too expensive.