Rheological Behaviour of an Insoluble Lemon Fibre as Affected by Stirring, Temperature, Time and Storage

Abstract

In this work, the effect the preparation method (two different stirring systems at two temperatures and times), fibre concentration (between 2% and 3%), temperature (between 10 °C and 50 °C) and storage time (between 24 h and 50 days at 5 °C) had on the flow properties of a suspension of dietary lemon fibre prepared with a 45° Brix sucrose solution were evaluated. This information will be helpful in order to discover the best possibilities of using fibre to increase the viscosity of certain kinds of products, depending on the processing, storage and consumption conditions. The obtained results indicate that all the aspects which contribute to increase component solubilisation and the interaction of the insoluble fraction with the aqueous phase when preparing the suspension, such as a decrease in particle size, a rise in temperature or a longer homogenization time, entail a higher apparent viscosity. Moreover, favoring the solubilisation in the preparation process leads to a more stable rheological behaviour of the suspension during storage. As expected, the apparent viscosity of suspensions was dependent on the shear rate, concentration and temperature. A thixotropic behaviour of fibre suspension was only observed at a very low shear rate (5 s -1). © 2010 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC.