Production of Amino and Organic Acids from Protein Using Sub-Critical Water Technology

This work presents the hydrolysis of a water-soluble protein, bovine serum albumin (BSA), for the production of both amino and organic acids under the sub-critical water condition in the temperature range of 200–300°C. The products of the reaction were a water-insoluble solid phase, an aqueous phase, and an insignificant gas phase which was neglected in this study. Results have shown that BSA passes through an aggregation step, followed by a gel formation process which results in the formation of insoluble solid aggregates. Then, such formed solids unfolded with releasing polypeptides as an intermediate product then finally hydrolyzed to produce low molecular mass products such as amino and organic acids. It was found that there were insignificant amino acids produced in the temperature ranges of 200–225°C within 2 min and 275–300°C within 0.5 min. However, by extending the reaction time, the protein transferred to both amino and organic acids.