The sweet potato is one of the most versatile vegetables grown and enjoyed around the world. Sweet potato is starchy like the potato , but sweet potato has different starch properties .

The sweet potato starch produced from sweet potato production plant can be used in place of corn starch in recipes . The sweet potato starch  is also used for many commercial purposes , such as  make Asian noodles, sweeteners, beverages, produce ethanol fuel and so on .

The main sweet potato starch processing machines

How to produce starch from sweet potato in sweet potato starch production plant  ?

The production process of sweet potato starch production plant include seveal steps :  sweet potato cleaning and washing ,  sweet potato wet milling ,  sweet potato starch extraction, starch milk refining, dewatering of refined starch milk and starch drying.

The description of  sweet potato starch production

1. Sweet potato cleaning and washing in sweet potato starch production plant

The washing conveyor and the special designed washing machine will washing the sweet potato and remove the solid impurity ,such as sand ,small stone during the transportation .

Sweet potato starch milling machine

2. Sweet potato wet milling in sweet potato starch production plant

The sweet potatop is milled by the hammer mill after cut into small piece.  The purpose of the milling process is disruption of cell walls and release as much starch as possible for extracting sweet potato starch .  

3. Starch extraction in sweet potato starch production plant

The centrifugal sieves is used to separate the starch milk and the fiber for starch extraction .

4. Starch milk refining in sweet potato starch production plant

For making high quality sweet potato starch , raw starch milk will be purified in the refining process. This involves the removal of small fibers from the starch milk and then the removal of juice water and starch milk condensation. For this purpose, the hydrocyclones are commonly used.

Refining and concentration starch milk by hydro cyclones is the advanced technology in nowadays.

Sweet potato starch dewatering machine

5. Dewatering starch milk in sweet potato starch production plant

Dewatering starch milk is to remove the excess water by rotary vacuum filter, after dewatering , the wet  sweet potato starch with moisture content around 38% .

Sweet potato starch drying machine

6. Starch drying in sweet potato starch production plant

The sweet potato starch drying machine will dry the wet starch with hot air in few seconds. Then the starch is separated from hot air in cyclones. Due to short time of high temperature drying and intensive water evaporation from the starch granules, its surface is heated only to 40 °C. The sweet potato starch after drying with moisture content around 13% .