Corn Awareness
By Brenda Miller-Sanford, OCPA Education and Computer Coordinator
All grain corn grown is grown for consumers. We need oil, fuel, sweeteners, starch, healthful meat products, milk products, livestock and a wide array of products that all contain corn. Corn is processed primarily through dry milling and wet milling to obtain the materials needed to produce items we use or consume on a daily basis.
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Dry milling is a process of grinding corn. The corn is cleaned and the moisture content is raised to 20%. The hull and germ are removed and the remaining corn is ground. The products derived from dry milling are flour, cornmeal, grits, corn bran, oil and feed mixtures. These products are used in animal feeds, brewing, foods such as breakfast cereals, baked goods, etc., binders in building products, pharmaceuticals and fuel.
Alkaline cooking is used to produce tortillas, tortilla chips, corn chips, taco shells, etc. The whole kernel is cooked in near-boiling water with 1% lime, and then allowed to soak (steep) for a period of time. The corn is drained from the steep-water, washed to remove loose pericarp (hull) and excess lime, stoneground to form a dough and then fried or baked into the desired product.
Wet milling is a more complex process that produces starch, oil and sweeteners. The corn is soaked (steeped) in 50oC water with small amounts of sulfurous acid derived from sulfur dioxide gas. Lactic acid bacteria growing in the steep-water produce small amounts of lactic acid. The heat, along with these two chemicals, softens the kernels. After steeping, the kernels are coarsely ground.
The ground corn and some steep-water are sent through a hydrocyclone, which separates the germ. The fibrous material is removed, leaving the starch and protein.
Starch can be processed to improve its use in food and industrial products. It can be fermented to make alcohol or treated with natural proteins (enzymes) to produce high-fructose corn sweeteners. Starch can also be used in the production of chemicals, drugs, pharmaceuticals and paper.
Bioproducts made from corn, a natural, renewable raw material, can be used to replace products made from non-renewable resources or through chemical synthesis.
The best-known example of this is fuel ethanol.
Fermenting corn-derived dextrose produces a new group of bioproducts: organic acids, amino acids, vitamins and food gums.
Vitamins C and E, once obtained mainly through chemical synthesis, now can be made from corn by fermenting a dextrose feedstock.
Amino acids from corn can be used to produce lysine, threonine and tryptophan, important nutrient supplements required for animal nutrition.
Further studies are being done on corn bioproducts.
Corn products have so many uses. The primary products are starch, syrups and dextrose. The co-products are solubles, gluten and hulls and germ. These areas break down into hundreds of uses. From feeding livestock to baked goods to antibiotics and pharmaceuticals to building materials, it is amazing where grain corn can be used.
Just think as you drive by those fields of corn: farmers are not just growing that corn for themselves; they are growing it for you and me too!