International Journal of Food Science and Technology 2003, 38, 241–245 241

Clarification of date juice

Mohamed A. Al-Farsi*
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Food Research Centre, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK
(Received 27 December 2000; Accepted in revised form 9 June 2002)

Summary This study was initiated to utilize a variety of low quality dates (Qish-Habash) so that high
quality syrup could be produced by modifying the clarification process of the date juice.
Five different clarification treatments were used: (1) filtration, (2) hot liming and filtration,
(3) cold liming and filtration, (4) powder-activated carbon and filtration, and (5) granular-
activated carbon and filtration. The sugar content, total soluble solids, total ash, pH,
colour and purity were analysed to determine the clarification effects. The clarified juices
produced by these treatments were evaporated under constant conditions to produce date
syrup. Filtration, and activated carbon and filtration were the most successful treatments
for the clarification of the date juice. Filtration gave the highest improvement in syrup
purity (97.7%), due to the reduction of total ash by 19.5% and colour by 44.6%. Activated
carbon removed the juice colour to give the lowest amount (60% in powder form and 57%
in granular form), as well as reducing total ash, which led to an improved syrup purity,
92.2% in powder form and 91.4% in granular form. Liming clarification had undesirable
effects, by increasing the total ash (15% in hot and 17% in cold lime), and increasing the
colouring matter produced by decomposition.
Keywords Activated carbon, filtration, liming, syrup.

temperature, drought and salinity (Benyamin,

Introduction
Despite intensive development and cultivation of
other vegetable and fruit crops, dates remain one
of the main crops in the Sultanate of Oman. The
total numbers of date palm trees are approxi-
mately 12 million, of which 7.3 million are fruit-
bearing trees. The production reached 281 200
tonnes in 1999 compared with 235 500 tonnes for
1998 (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 2000).
There are more than 230 date palm varieties
grown in Oman, of which twenty are commercially
cultivated varieties (Benyamin, 1993).
Dates constitute the main part of the diet and
are an important source of income for the majority
of the population in the rural areas. They are also
important for the ecology of the country, being the
most adaptive crop and tolerant of various envi-
ronmental extremes and stresses such as high
*Correspondent: Fax: +44 01522 886026;
e-mail: malfarsi@lincoln.ac.uk
1993).
Low quality date cultivation occupies about
60% of the total plantation. These dates are poor
in size and taste, unsuitable for consumption, and
usually sold as animal feed at reduced prices. The
presence of a high sugar content in these low
quality varieties makes them suitable for industrial
use, and thus a wide range of products can be
produced from these dates.
Date syrup (locally named Dibs) is probably the
most common date product. It is produced in two
different ways; either at domestic or village level
by extraction and boiling down of the juice, or on
a semi or full industrial scale, the process consist-
ing of extraction, clarification and concentration
of the date juice.
Clarification not only covers the process of
freeing the extracted raw juice from nonsoluble
matter but is also concerned with removal of some
soluble (e.g. colouring matter) and semisoluble
(e.g. pectin) material (Barreveld, 1993). It has been

Ó 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

242 Clarification of date juice M. A. Al-Farsi
noticed that the clarification methods, as applied to
low quality cultivation, face quality problems.
The aim of this study was to utilize one of the
low quality date varieties (Qish-Habash) to pro-
duce good quality date syrup by improving the
clarification process. Production of this kind of
product from dates can generate higher income
to the farmers, ensure food security and self-
sufficiency, reduce importation of this product
and lead to greater diversification of products,
thereby strengthening the national economy.
Materials and methods
Juice extraction
The dates (Qish-Habash) were obtained from the
local market in Oman. A bowl chopper (EMS,
MTK20, Saarbrucken, Germany) was used to
chop the dates to 0.5–1 cm thickness, and then
the dates were mixed with equal amounts of water,
using a steam-jacketed pan (Model 241, Benham,
London, UK). The mixture was then stirred for
20 min at 60 °C, the juice extracted through muslin
cloth, and the remaining pulp mixed with water
and re-extracted.
Clarification treatments
To improve the quality of the extracted juice, five
different clarification methods were used (Fig. 1):
1 Filtration using a filter press (Model 13039;
William Boulton, Burslem, UK) in two stages;
coarse (50 lm filter paper) and fine (3 lm filter
paper).
2 Combination of hot liming and filtration; the
raw juice was coarse filtered, then treated by
hot lime using calcium hydroxide (CaO) at
60 °C to pH 7.5. The juice after liming was then
fine filtered.
3 Cold liming and filtration at 25 °C.
4 Powder-activated carbon and filtration; after
coarse filtration, the filtered matter was trea-
ted with 0.5% activated carbon and the
mixture heated to 60 °C for 20 min, followed
by fine filtration.
5 Granular activated carbon and filtration
(0.5%).
International Journal of Food Science and Technology 2003, 38, 241–245
Evaporation
The clarified juice from each process was evapor-
ated separately under similar conditions (70 °C
under a vacuum of 500–600 mmHg) using a BCH
evaporator vessel (30-L, Rochdale, UK) to pro-
duce syrup of 70 Brix.
Analytical methods
Sugar analysis
Sugar (glucose and fructose) levels were meas-
ured according to Kirk & Sawyer (1991), using a
Hitachi HPLC system (L-6200A, Tokyo, Japan),
with a hypersil amino column and mass detector.
The juice was filtered through Whatman 42 and
C18 clean-up cartridges (Waters, Hertsford, UK)
prior to injection, acetonitrile and water (82 : 18,
v/v) being used as the mobile phase.
Colour analysis
Colour measurements were made using a
Shimadzu spectrophotometer (UV-1601, Tokyo,
Japan) at 420 nm, according to De Whalley
(1964) and calculated using the following equa-
tion:
Colour (IU) ¼ 100  E 420=ðL  W  dÞ
where IU is the international units, E 420 is the
wavelength, L is the length of cell (10 cm), W is
the concentration (Brix), and d is the density.
Total soluble solids and pH
Total soluble solids and pH were measured using a
Bellingham refractometer (Abbe60; Bellingham &
Stanley, London, UK), and a Hanna pH meter
(pH 210, Bedford, UK), respectively.
Purity
Percentage of purity was calculated according to
the following equation:
Purityð%Þ ¼ ðtotal sugars=total solidsÞ  100
(Mathlouthi & Reiser, 1995)
Chemicals
All chemicals used in this study were purchased
from Sigma, Aldrich, and Fluka Chemical Ltd,
Gillingham, UK.
Ó 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Clarification of date juice M. A. Al-Farsi 243

Dates
80–75% TSS

Size
reduction
0.5–1 cm thickness

Date juice
extraction
60 ˚C for 20 min

Coarse
filtration
50 µm filter paper

Hot Cold Granular Powder

liming liming activated activated
carbon carbon
60 ˚C, pH 7.5 pH 7.5 0.5% TS 0.5% TS

Fine
filtration
3 µm filter paper

Evaporation
70 ˚C under 500–600 mm Hg

Figure 1 Experiment flow diagram (TSS: total soluble solids; TS: total solids).

The granular activated carbon treatment gave the

Results and discussion
The results of analysis of the clarification treat-
ments (Table 1) show that filtration gave the
highest removal of ash content from the raw juice,
compared with the other clarification treatments.
The calcium used for liming clarification led to a
slight and insignificant increase in the total ash
content from 0.41% in raw juice to 0.47% for the
hot liming and 0.48% for the cold. The activated
carbon treatment slightly increased the ash con-
tent compared with the filtered juice (from 0.33 to
0.41%), because of the addition of carbon, which
could not be removed by the filtration process.
highest removal of colour from the raw juice (from
6.6 to 2.8) and, according to Nancy & Smith
(1983), granular activated carbon is an efficient
decolourizer because it removes all flavonoids and
almost all phenolic derivatives. Filtration treat-
ment removed some of the colouring matter from
the raw juice physically, without any chemical
effect (from 6.6 to 3.7), whereas the powder-
activated carbon gave higher colour, because of
unrecovered carbon. Hot liming had the most
detrimental effect due to alkalinity and high
temperature, this led to sugar destruction, and
produced undesirable colour (5.7). Filtration

Ó 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd International Journal of Food Science and Technology 2003, 38, 241–245
244 Clarification of date juice M. A. Al-Farsi

Table 1 Development of date juice quality by clarification

Ash Colour Sugars TSS Purity

Treatments (%) (IU) (g 100 mL)1) (%) pH (%)

Raw juice 0.41 ± 0.05 6.64 ± 0.4 18.60 ± 0.5 20.5 ± 0.5 6.13 ± 0.05 90.7 ± 0.5
Filtration 0.33 ± 0.05 3.68 ± 0.2 16.70 ± 0.5 17.5 ± 0.5 6.22 ± 0.05 95.4 ± 0.5
Filtration and hot liming 0.47 ± 0.05 5.70 ± 0.4 13.70 ± 0.5 18.0 ± 0.5 7.56 ± 0.04 76.1 ± 0.5
Filtration and cold liming 0.48 ± 0.05 4.36 ± 0.4 13.77 ± 0.4 16.5 ± 0.5 7.53 ± 0.05 83.4 ± 0.5
Filtration and PAC 0.38 ± 0.05 4.70 ± 0.4 16.50 ± 0.4 17.9 ± 0.5 6.14 ± 0.05 92.2 ± 0.5
Filtration and GAC 0.41 ± 0.05 2.84 ± 0.2 15.30 ± 0.5 18.5 ± 0.5 5.32 ± 0.05 82.7 ± 0.5

TSS, total soluble solids; PAC, powder-activated carbon; GAC, granular-activated carbon; IU, international units.
Data are expressed as mean ± s.d. of three determinations.

Table 2 The developed date syrup in comparison with others produced in Iraq

Developed date syrup Iraqi date syrup*

Treatments (%) Filtration HL-F CL-F PAC-F GAC-F Factory made Cottage made

TSS 69.3 ± 0.5 69.0 ± 0.4 69.0 ± 0.3 69.1 ± 0.5 69.0 ± 0.5 72.4 74.3
Glucose 34.5 ± 0.2 26.9 ± 0.5 30.5 ± 0.3 32.2 ± 0.5 31.1 ± 0.4 35.5 29.7
Fructose 33.2 ± 0.4 29.1 ± 0.4 29.6 ± 0.5 31.5 ± 0.3 32.0 ± 0.4 27.9 23.9
Purity 97.7 ± 0.5 81.2 ± 0.4 87.1 ± 0.5 92.2 ± 0.5 91.4 ± 0.5 88.7 75.1

*Data were obtained from Barreveld (1993). TSS, total soluble solids; HL-F, hot liming and filtration; CL-F, cold liming and
filtration; PAC-F, powder-activated carbon and filtration; GAC-F, granular-activated carbon and filtration.
Data are expressed as mean ± s.d. of three determinations.

treatment recovered the highest content of sugar
from the date juice, followed by activated carbon.
The decrease in sugar content by the liming
process is caused by the destruction of sugars by
alkalinity and the high temperature (Davidek
et al., 1990).
For the development of purity by clarification
treatments, filtration gave the highest improve-
ment in juice purity (95.4%), due to a reduction
of total ash to 0.33% and colour to 3.7, followed
by powder-activated carbon and filtration treat-
ments.
After the clarification treatments, the clarified
juices were evaporated to produce date syrup.
Table 2 shows a comparison of the date syrup
developed by this study and others produced in
Iraq. It is indicated that the clarification treat-
ments developed are able to remove undesirable
matter (pigments and fibres) and maintain high
sugar recovery, which leads to improved purity of
the date syrup to 97.7 and 91.4% for filtration and
granular activated carbon and filtration, respect-
ively, compared with other date syrup (88.7%).
In conclusion, it is possible to produce high-
grade syrup from low quality dates, which com-
pares well with syrup produced from high quality
dates, by using filtration and activated carbon and
filtration treatments. In the future, taste and
aroma-active components, and sensory attributes
will be examined to compare the differences in
both low and high quality date syrups.
References
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Ó 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd International Journal of Food Science and Technology 2003, 38, 241–245