Combined effect of operational variables and enzyme activity on aqueous enzymatic extraction of oil and protein from soybean

The individual effect of two different enzymes—protease and cellulase—on oil and protein extraction yields combined with other process parameters—enzyme concentration, time of hydrolysis, particle size and solid-to-liquid ratio—was evaluated by Response Surface Methodology. The selection of the enzymes for the study was based on preliminary experiments that showed higher increments in the extraction yield with the use of the two enzymes when compared to hemicellulase and pectinase. The levels of the quantitative parameters studied were: i) enzyme concentration: 0.1, 0.45, 2 w/w %; ii) liquid-to-solid ratio: 0.05, 0.125, 0.2; iii) mean particle size: 212.5, 449.5, 855 μm; iv) time of hydrolysis: 30; 60; 120 min. Experimental data for both oil and protein extraction yields obtained with and without enzymes correlated very well with process parameters (P < 0.0001), resulting in models with high coefficient of determination for oil and protein extraction yields (r2 = 0.9570 and r2 = 0.9807, respectively). The use of protease resulted in significantly higher yields over the control (protein yield increased from 27.8 to 66.2%, oil yield increased from 41.8 to 58.7%) only when heat treated flour was used, or when non-heat treated flour with large particle sizes was used in the extraction. The yields of protein and oil from non-heat treated material in general decreased slightly with the use of enzymes.