*** This is not a question on the health effects of MSG or glutamic acid - Please start your own thread if you desire to discuss health effects.***
What are common industrial methods of making MSG and what are the impurities (types and concentration) in the final product ?
Hereis more than you ever wanted to know about making MSG.
As that was published in 1999, and appears to be about a new method for making MSG, I think we can safely conclude that it is not how it was traditionally made (although some of the techniques involved may be the same), and probably not how most of the stuff is made now.
I am also a bit puzzled by the fact that (without having read the paper all through) they seem to be saying that they are making glutamate out of starch. Glutamate contains nitrogen, and starch does not, so it cannot be made from starch alone.
fermentation and separation is used now.
Not its production method but the last (reanimated) MSG thread got locked before I could share this article about its history, from Japanese chemist Ikeda Kikunae’s 1908 isolation of it from sea kelp on to its modern use as an industrial additive and its umami rehabilitiation.
About production: Until 1965 it was by way of isolation from wheat gluten. For a shortish period from sugar beet waste. Then chemical production and since the 50s mostly fermentation method. Much detail in the link.
Thanks but I am looking for a bit deeper dive. What is fermented ? What is the starting concentration and what’s the ending concentration? What temperature is the fermentation at ? What are the microorganism involved and how is their population controller for rogue organisms? How do they measure when the fermentation is complete ? What are the undesirable or by products ? How do they purify it ? Distillation ?
Do dive into the article I linked to then.
And njtt, nitrogen is added by way of ammonia salt, urea, or gaseous ammonia.
Good article - thank you. It did address some of the questions I had. I think it is written from a chemist’s point of view and it did not go into details on concentrations, yields and byproducts/contaminants. It did mention Kirk othmer as reference - so I will read the details there if available.
If I compare it to making alcohol - it did not go into the details of tannins or the acids that are produced during fermentation that makes or breaks a wine.
You are welcome but I do not get your comment -
The commercial production of alcohol is a fine comparison; that is not the same as the commercial production of wine. An explanation of the commmercial production of alcohol might be a description of how corn is fermented and distilled to produce ethanol - the tannins and acids that make or break a wine are not part of that as the product is not wine but ethanol. MSG is not wine.
In the case of MSG, as described in the article, the fermentation product is sterilized then centrifuged to remove solids, then concentrated and MSG crystalized. The major contaminants of concern are the D-isomer, referred to as the R-isomer in the article (the S-isomer being the target product), water and salt, and the method for dealing with excess of the undesired isomer is discussed in the article.