Diverse uses of Starch make it a very versatile product. Maize or Corn Starch is a typical cereal starch with distinctly low protein and ash contents. Its carbohydrate content of high purity makes it useful in several industries.
Starch occurs in nature in many ways. Maize contains about 66% of starch, which can be separated from other ingredients by various processes such as steeping, grinding, purifying and drying. The physio-chemical and functional properties of starch exhibit a wide variation with slight change in the production parameters. One of the important properties is the viscosity of starch slurry. Normally, starch has near neutral PH. With an increase in the PH, viscosity of starch tends to increase, thus making it possible to have diverse uses. This is commonly known as High Viscosity Starch and is used in the textile industry for sizing.
Maize Starch exhibits all the properties of native starch with some special features such as non-foaming & non-thinning characteristics of boiling solution. Hence maize starch has a marginal effect on the efficiency in weaving and paper industry. Where high viscosity starch is used, it imparts higher tensile strength to the fibre and thus improves the sizing. The remarkable advantage over tapioca starch is short cooking time of less than an hour and uniform smoothness of paste. The foaming is low even at high pH. The starch deeply penetrates into the fibres making it an ideal choice for sizing and finishing.
Combined with resins, starch produces a permanent finish. Good binding capacity results in its use as a good filler and binder in tablets. It is also a vital additive for most of the adhesives due to these properties. In slurry, it provides body to food products. It also helps in retaining the viscosity of foods. Besides this, it is excellent filler in cosmetics by virtue of its smoothness in dry form.
Textile Industry
Maize Starch is used in textile industry to provide stiffness & to add weight to cloths. Starch is also used in conjunction with thermoplastic or thermosetting resins to obtain a permanent finish.
Food Industry
Maize Starch plays a vital role in food industry due to its characteristic such as viscosity & opaque paste, used for thickening sauces, gravies, puddings and pie fillings. It has numerous application in baking industry, provides strength to ice cream cones.
Paper Industry
Maize Starch is used in paper industry for sizing as well as to increase the paper strength. The purpose of size press application is to improve appearance and erasibility ink penetration and form a hard firm surface for writing or Printing, to produce surface fiber picking, and to prepare the sheet for subsequent coating. Corn Starch is used as an adhesive in pigmented coating for paper and paper board. The primary purpose of coating is to enhance the printability and appearance of the paper.
Pharmaceutical Industry
Maize Starch is used in Pharmaceutical Industry as a dusting media for various type of coating as well as binder & filler for capsules & tables. It is widely accepted in the areas of Dry granulation techniques where active ingredient are hygroscopic and is difficult to dry after wet binding, Maize Starch has proved to be as a efficient dry – binder.