A rapid benchtop NMR method for determination of droplet size distributions in food emulsions

✍ Scribed by John P. M. van Duynhoven; Benjamin Maillet; Jimmy Schell; Mathieu Tronquet; Gert-Jan W. Goudappel; Elena Trezza; Andrea Bulbarello; Dagmar van Dusschoten

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 381 KB
• Volume: 109
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1438-7697
• DOI: 10.1002/ejlt.200700019

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The determination of water and oil droplet size distributions in food emulsions by low‐field NMR has the advantage of a simple and non‐perturbing sample preparation. Furthermore, NMR performs very well with respect to precision. The current implementation on most benchtop NMR spectrometers deploys a variation of gradient duration and requires continuous corrections for gradient imbalances, thus making the whole procedure a time‐consuming one. By using variation of gradient strength and further stretching the capability of commercial benchtop NMR spectrometers, both water and oil droplet sizes can be measured in a more rapid manner, typically two to three times faster. The measured droplet size distributions are equivalent to those assessed by the current (slow) method, for both O/W and W/O emulsions. Furthermore, the rapid method shows a good performance with respect to precision. In addition, the method is able to determine droplet sizes in samples with much smaller amounts of dispersed phase.