Peeling
Peeling is the first step of sweet potato processing. The amount and quality of the resulting sweet potato peelings depend on many factors including tuber size, tuber maturity, peeling time and peeling process. Physical methods using abrasing rollers or hand peeling result in high peel losses (up to 30-60%). This make these processes unsuitable for industrial production, though they can be used in smaller facilities. Chemical processing using lye is more efficient and has been used extensively, but it is no longer a common method in the industry due to issues with equipment corrosion and waste disposal. The most common method in industrial facilities is steam peeling. Steam and pressure are applied a few seconds, which increases moisture and gelatinizes the starch contained in the peels. One benefit of steam peeling is that it has a sanitation effect, anti-microbial or bacteriostatic (EPA, 1974; Truong et al., 2018; Button, 2015; Bouwkamp, 1985).
Starch extraction
In the starch extraction process, the tubers are ground in limewater and the extracted starch is separated from the pulp by washing over a series of screens, bleaching with sodium hypochlorite, and then settling by gravity or centrifugation. The starch can be stored wet or dried by natural or artificial methods (Truong et al., 2018). Starch extraction yield varies from 12 to 28% and depends on many factors, including the process, the variety and environmental conditions, which in turn influences the starch content of the residual pulp (Rahman et al., 2003).
Distillery by-products
Condensed distillers solubles are produced during the production of shochu, a traditional Japanese hard liquor obtained by distillation of sweet potato (Kamiya et al., 2017). However, this product has a high moisture content and is very acid, and is thus difficult to use in animal feeding (Woolfe, 1992).
Other by-products
The production of many sweet potato-based food products, which often involves a heating process (cooking, blanching, frying), results in by-products such as culled fries, culled crisps, hash browns, crowns, batter, crumbles, nubbins etc. These by-products may contain additional oil, which increases their energy content, and other ingredients like salt. The heating process results in gelatinized, readily digestible starch (Bouwkamp, 1985). Information about the use of these by-products in animal feeding is inexistent.