The effects of process conditions on rheological properties of functional citrus fibre suspensions

A deeper knowledge of rheological effects of dietary fibre in aqueous suspensions and theirdependence on operating conditions adopted in their preparation seems necessary to designproperly systems with expected rheological properties. It is known that changes in “mixingintensity” can modify the observed rheological properties of fibre suspensions; neverthelessonly a small number of previously published data is available, and, usually, they are relatedto technological parameters such as speed of mixing (rpm), homogenisation pressure, res-idence time, etc. In the present work, the energy and the power of mixing were used, in asystematic investigation, and it was observed that by increasing both of them a strongerthree-dimensional network is obtained, as the result of the interactions among the dis-persed particles. Nevertheless, when higher levels of energy or power are used, no furtherincrease in network strength can be obtained. The proposed approach and the obtainedresults can be relevant for industrial applications in order to scale-up the production offibres’ suspensions