Wasted ice cream products contain many valuable food components, most notably butterfat, which has potential for recovery. Disk bowl centrifugation, widely used in milk processing, has not been previously used with ice cream. In comparison to milk, ice cream has larger variations in fat content, smaller fat globule sizes, and the presence of additives and emulsifiers. An Armfield FT15 lab-scale disk bowl centrifuge was used to separate samples of five ice creams containing 1.25 kg melted ice cream each at temperatures ranging from 30 °C to 80 °C, while incorporating enzymatic digestion from four enzymes to encourage fat separation. Results showed that fat capture from ice cream is aided by enzymatic digestion. Rennet was the most effective enzyme tested. Although some varieties performed better without processing compared to 1 h incubation, all ice creams benefitted from processing after 4 h of incubation, with at least 40% fat (weight basis) and high total recovery. Optimal conditions were found with a 4 h rennet incubation, with four of five ice cream varieties showing greater than 90% fat recovery and a fat concentration of 37% wet basis or higher.

Films are an important tool in food packaging, delivery, and preservation of food products. Plastic based films are commonly used for this task, but commonly used plastic has many downsides. Milk based films have the potential to be renewable, edible, and provide a lower cost option to replace plastic films. Research into milk-based films, particularly caseinates, has been conducted, but there is still a need to find formulations that have superior physical properties and can be made with cheaper materials. Some research has suggested that pH modification of the film solution into alkaline conditions could improve film properties and mitigate the hydrophilic nature of milk-based proteins. Calcium Caseinate (CaCN) and Calcium Caseinate with nonfat dry milk (CaCN-NFDM) based films were made with increased pH to study their physical qualities. Film strength for CaCN films reached a relative maximum at pH 8, while CaCN-NFDM films showed gradually increasing tensile strength with pH. Both recipes showed relative maxima of elongation at pH 8, as well as increasing values from pH 9 to 12. CaCN films showed increasing strength and decreasing elongation with aging, reaching a maximum of 34.7 MPA for one month of age, and 45.7 MPA at 24 months. Increasing pH above 10 yielded the lowest oxygen permeabilities for both recipes. The data indicate that calcium caseinate films with modified pH have many beneficial properties, performing better than previously reported milk-based films in a number of categories and are promising candidates for food applications.