What is the difference between cassava flour and tapioca starch?

Cassava flour and tapioca flour (also sometimes called tapioca starch or cassava starch ) are both made from cassava. But they are actually different substances, so what is difference between cassava flour and tapioca starch ? Basically, they are different in property, processing method and equipment as well as usage.

Tapioca starch (left) and cassava flour

Firstly, property: Cassava starch is whiter and finer than cassava flour.

Then processing meethod and equipment: Cassava starch is processed by clean cassava, grate it into mash, then separate the components like fibers, protein and cell liquip out of starch slurry to get pure cassava starch and then to dewater and dry it. Whiler cassava flour processing just need to grate cleaned cassava into mash and dewatered and dry it. Therefore obtained cassava flour still contains fibers, protein and other component in cell.

The equipment used for cassava starch processing and cassava flour processing also differs, equipment for cassava starch processing includes dry sieve, paddle washing machine, rasper, centrifugal sieve, fine fiber sieve, desander, hydrocyclone station, peeler centrifuge and flash dryer. Equipment for cassava flour processing includes cassava cleaning machine, washing machine, grating machine, desanding machine, dewatering machine and drying machine.

Finally, usage:  Cassava flour is mainly used for food, it can partially replace wheat flour for bread making. Cassava starch is mainly used in industrial purpose. For example, it can be used as raw material for making paper, in textile industry, chemical industry and so on.