White wine continuous protein stabilization by packed column

Protein stabilization is an important stage in the production of white wine. This paper studies white wine protein stabilization using a continuous process with zirconium oxide (powder and pellets) packed in a column. The results show that the total proteins decrease by 50 and 70% for the pellet and powdered zirconium oxides, respectively. Treatment with all zirconium oxides improves wine stability. The effect of the heat regeneration process on both zirconium oxide forms is to increase the adsorption capacity. The wine treated with powdered zirconium oxide after the regeneration is the most effective for preventing protein haze. The protein profile of wine after treatment shows that the 20-50 kDa and 50-70 kDa fractions are the ones removed preferentially, while the 15 kDa fraction and the ones higher than 70 kDa are removed the least. The results show that the protein fraction with a molecular weight of 15 kDa does not affect the protein instability of the wines studied. The protein fraction with a molecular weight higher than 70 kDa seems to influence protein instability. The physicochemical properties of wine after treatment were not affected, and the values obtained were like those of the standardized range.