ProUmid White Paper: Amorphous Content of Sucrose and Sucrose Containing Food Systems

ProUmid White Paper

Sucrose is used as sweetener in many food products, and, except for sweetness, the addition of sucrose has influence on the physico-chemical and technological properties of a product due to its aw-lowering and viscosity-enhancing effects.

During the production of sucrose or its further processing in food both amorphous and crystalline structures can be formed. For example, high forces during fine grinding in the production of icing sugar or the rapid solidification during spray- or freeze drying of sucrose containing food powders favors an increased amorphous content.

White Paper

Regarding hard caramels or candy floss amorphous structures are specially created as they define the specific structure of these products. However, amorphous structures often affect the product performance negatively which can be attributed to the high hygroscopicity of the amorphous state.

In follow, moisture is adsorbed from the environment and, with exceeding a critical humidity level, the transition to the thermodynamic stable crystal form is induced. Due to the lower water binding capacity of the crystalline state the adsorbed moisture is released which may cause undesired product changes like caking and reduced flowability of powders, a lower microbial- and chemical stability or modification of the product’s appearance such as color changes and loss of transparency. To estimate the stability of such products and formulations, the knowledge about the amorphous content and the recrystallization kinetics is crucial

This White Paper aims to show the applicability of Dynamic Water Vapor Sorption Analysis (DVS) for the quantitative determination of amorphous contents in sucrose and sucrose containing model food mixtures.