Determination of optimum enzymes concentrations at reaction step of maltose syrup process

Reaction time and enzyme concentration are important parameters for the maltose syrup production. In this study, two parameter were controlled, which are enzyme and time, also was to determine the optimum starch decomposition reaction period during maltose production. Different concentrations of beta and alpha amylase enzymes (0.10, 0.15, 0.20 and 0.25 ml of β-amylase; 0.03, 0.05, 0.07 and 0.09 ml of α-amylase) were used. The concentration of dextrose, maltose, maltotriose (DP3), high sugars (DPN), pH and Brix were determined. It was found that optimum reaction time was determined as 6.0 hour to reach optimum level for each components. Enzymatic reaction of maltose syrup was optimized using three numerical models which were linear, quadratic and artificial neural network. Input variables of models were alpha amylase enzyme (E2), beta amylase enzyme (E1) and time (t). Output variables of models were the percentage of maltose, dextrose, DP3 and DPN. The results indicated that ANN model has higher performance than quadratic and linear models on sugar profile of maltose syrup. Three inputs, four outputs and one hidden layer with eleven nodes were used. Besides this feature, neural network was designed for reversing the process such that inputs are to be selected as outputs, and outputs become inputs in the first network. Desired product specifications are adjusted due to reversible feature of model. Key words: maltose, maltose syrup, starch, corn, α-amylase, β-amylase