Modified Cellulose Fibers for Optimizing Filtration Methods

For enhancing the taste/ smell profiles and particularly colloidal shelf life of clear drinks especially beer, wine and juices, they need filtering. Hereby removing every unwanted turbid materials and yeast cells or hop resins, from the drink. In the beverage industry, this so-called artificial clarifying based extensively on precoat filtration with diatomaceous earth whose usage, due to an iron input acting pro oxidative, and disposal is highly problematic,. As most breweries already possess the machinery for this kind of filtration, the ideal filtration would be precoat filtration without usage of diatomaceous earth.

The invention presented here achieves this by using modified functional cellulose fibers comprising mostly cellulose with varying amounts of additionally bound additives, mainly croscarmellose-sodium. This swellable polysaccharide is a food additive already approved by the EU and enables enhanced filtration of turbid active ingredients. The modified cellulose fibers receive additional functional properties by special treatment of cellulose, further enhancing the absorption of turbid active protein compounds. Resulting filters are not only harmless for humans, decomposable and thus easy to dispose, but also suited for reducing the usage of stabilizers, like PVPP or silica gels, normally applied in beverage industries.