Study of a preparative-scale process for the production of amylose

A method for the preparative-scale production of amylose was studied. Wrinkled pea starch was chosen as the starting material because the amylose content of this starch is especially high. The main steps in the process were production of a molecularly dispersed starch solution by pressure cooking the starch and debranching the amylopectin with the industrial enzyme, Promozym®, from Novo. The resulting product contained the amylose and oligosaccharides from debranched amylopectin. The amylose was complexed with butanol-1 and the complex was separated from the solution by centrifuging, while the oligosaccharides remained in solution. Butanol-1 was removed by reflux cooking of the sediment in water. Then the amylose was precipitated with ethanol and dried. The temperature for the production of the starch solution was optimized so that the starch was molecularly dispersed but not appreciably degraded. The industrial debranching enzyme, Promozym®, contains also a small amount of glycosidic activity, Consequently, the quantity of enzyme had to be adjusted to ensure that degradation of the amylose was not excessive. Two amylose samples with different molar mass distributions were prepared on a kilogram scale.