van der Sman RGM, Meinders MBJ. Moisture diffusivity in food materials.
Food Chem 2012;
138:1265-74. [PMID:
23411242 DOI:
10.1016/j.foodchem.2012.10.062]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2012] [Accepted: 10/01/2012] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
This paper investigates whether moisture diffusion can be predicted for food materials. We focus especially on mixtures of glucose homopolymers and water. The predictions are based on three theories: (1) the Darken relation, linking the mutual diffusivity to the self diffusivities, (2) the generalised Stokes-Einstein relation for the solute self diffusivity, and (3) the free volume theory for water self diffusivity. Using literature data obtained for the whole class of glucose homopolymer, we show that these theories predict the moisture diffusivity for the whole range of volume fractions, from zero to one, and a broad range of temperatures. Furthermore, we show that the theories equally holds for other hydrophilic biopolymers one finds in food. In the concentrated regime, all experimental data collapse to a single curve. This universal behaviour arises because these biopolymers form a hydrogen bonded network, where water molecules move via rearrangement of the free volume.
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