Caracterização e secagem em spray dryer de leite em pó integral com lactose hidrolisada

Abstract

The food industry has the challenge and the opportunity to develop new products with reduced or low lactose content in order to meet the needs of a growing mass of people with lactose maldigestion. Milk powder is also inserted into these new trend but this product still faces major technological challenge due to the fact that drying of products with hydrolyzed lactose is extremely challenging mostly because of a higher number of molecules (glucose and galactose) in the amorphous state which makes it quite a highly hygroscopic product thus influencing productivity, post-conservation not to mention the undesirable and also inevitable technological problem of the constant clogging of drying chambers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of different levels of enzymatic hydrolysis of lactose, 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and > 99% in production and storage of whole milk powder using as analitical parameters in the pilot plant the following: composition analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), analysis of hydrodynamic diameter of particles by laser diffraction (LS) after rehydration in water plus Raman spectroscopy of powders in 75.5% air moisture environment seeking to monitor the glass transition of the residual lactose. It was possible to verify direct influence of increased hydrolysis to moisture values of the powders as well as the impact on the adhesion thereof into the drying chamber due to primary agglomeration of particles characterized by SEM. LS analysis also has shown the effect of increasing hydrolysis in the reduction of the population of particles between 40 and 500 nanometers demonstrating a strong influence on the rehydration capacity of the products. By means of Raman spectroscopy it has been possible to characterize the physical state of the carbohydrates in the powder particles, using principal component analysis for the 1200-400 cm-1 spectral range, which identified that products with 25%, 50%, 75% and > 99% hydrolysis have shown no crystallization effect in the controlled humidity environment for 6 weeks. The hydrolysis of lactose into glucose and galactose impacts drying milk products to promote greater adhesion to equipment more prone to darkening, decreased solubility of the microstructure after modification. In dairy products containing lactose can observe the formation of lactose crystals when they are subjected to favorable glass transition. The Raman spectroscopy technique combined with chemometrics enables us to state that hydrolyzed milk products when subjected to favorable conditions the glass transition do not have the formation of sugar crystals.