How to make tapioca starch from cassava ?

Cassava is native to tropical America, widely cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions, mainly distributed in Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Bolivia, Thailand, Colombia, Indonesia and other countries. It has long cylindrical tubers with fleshy roots and starchy root tubers for eating or making paste, grinding cassava powder, making bread, providing tapioca starch, and even alcoholic beverages. And tapioca starch has been the economic backbone of those country. Now we are going to make a brief introduction of how to make tapioca starch from cassava based on modern Cassava starch processing.It's operation process including Cleaning and washing, rasping, Starch Extraction, De-sanding , Settling, Dewatering, Drying, Sieving Packing and Storing. About how to make tapioca starch from cassava, the brief production process description as below:

Tapioca starch production process

1.Cleaning and washing

As the cassava fresh roots being havested from the land contains a certain percentage of residues such as sand, small or bigger stones, or even metals being mixed during processing, It is the first very important step to remove the residues. In all, do as much as we could to ensure the raw material of the cassava roots to be pure.

2.Rasping

Cassava rasper,the finer type cassava crushing machine the more starch articles being come out. As we know the starch grain exists with a very small size of about 20μm ( for cassava starch).It is used for crushing cassava in process for how to make tapioca starch from cassava.

Cassava rasper

3.Starch Extraction

Starch extraction, the opener sieve screen the more starch we get. In the process of how to make tapioca starch from cassava, it is not a easy job to get the starch grain of about 20μm from the roots pulp which mixed with roots fibers, liquid of protien, minials, etc. To sieve off the bigger size of roots fibers obviously comes to be the first step to get the starch grain. Either by plane rotating sieve screen or round rotating sieve screen, obviously sieve screen becomes the key issue. The mesh size of the screen must be choosed properly, and it also should be strong enough, and most importantly we should keep it unblocked as its hole size from 120μm to about 80μm which is easily being impeded. In this process, spray washing is an important way to keep the sieve hole continuously open both by process water and clean water. And the amount of them should be counted accurately to keep the whole flow balance run.

Tapioca starch slurry seperating machine

4.Seperating:

De-sanding is mainly used for separating small fiber from starch slurry according to its own gravity and centrifugal force. After removing some fiber, there are still fine fiber left.It is one of the necessary process of how to make tapioca starch from cassava. And it will remove the impurities which heavier than starch such as sands and metal. Then adopt the fine fiber sieve for further seperating to get high quality clean starch liquid.

5.Dewatering

Once the drum rotating, outside and inside have a big pressure difference due to vacuum effect, then the liquid comes through filtering cloth to the vacuum pump till steam separator from which a fan driven out the vacuum to dry the materials inside the dewater drum. And it is recycling type. Moisture content from 65% to 45% through the machine.

Cassava starch drying machine

6.Drying

Highest temperature 180 degrees, begining temperature could reach out to 130 degrees. Very fast drying. The out-feed temperature is about 50 degree. The moisture content could be 13% after drying to reach national standard grade A starch. An important technical process of how to make tapioca starch from cassava.

7.Packing and Storing

Packing starch into bags and storing in a normal atmospheric temperature, dry place.

The main machines include cassava cleaning and washing machine, cassava crushing machine, centrifugal sieve, fine fiber sieve, hydrocyclone, vacuum filter, flash dryer, etc in the whole process of how to make tapioca starch from cassava line. If you want to build a tapioca starch plant, please contact with us freely.