Carbohydrates such as sucrose and maltodextrins are commonly used in dehydrated food beverages. However, these ingredients may have, in some cases, negative impacts on the reconstitution performance (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe reconstitution of a beverage from a dehydrated powder involves several physical mechanisms that determine the practical difficulty to obtain a homogeneous drink in a convenient way and within an acceptable time for the preparation of a beverage. When pouring powder onto static water, the first hurdle to overcome is the air-water interface. We propose a model to predict the percentage of powder crossing the interface in 45 s, namely the duration relevant for this application.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe study the wetting of polymer layers by polar solvents. As previously observed, when a droplet of solvent spreads, both its contact angle and velocity decrease with time as a result of solvent transfers from the droplet to the substrate. We show that, when the polymer is initially glassy, the angle decreases steeply for a given value of the velocity, Ug.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe wetting dynamics of a solvent on a soluble substrate interestingly results from the rates of the solvent transfers into the substrate. When a supported film of a hydrosoluble polymer with thickness e is wet by a spreading droplet of water with instantaneous velocity U, the contact angle is measured to be inversely proportionate to the product of thickness and velocity, eU, over two decades. As for many hydrosoluble polymers, the polymer we used (a polysaccharide) has a strongly nonlinear sorption isotherm φ(a(w)), where φ is the volume fraction of water in the polymer and aw is the activity of water.
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