ESTIMATING AND MODELLING THE COMPOSITIONS OF CRYSTALLIZING TRIACYLGLYCEROL BINARY MIXTURES USING X-RAY DIFFRACTION

Abstract

It is necessary to predict the composition, polymorphic form and distribution of the crystalline phases formed from a liquid mixture of fats at any temperature as these attributes affect the physical properties of fat based foods like melting point, spreadability etc. This study aims at testing the linear kinetic segregation (LKS) model (Los and Flöter, 1999) to predict experimental phase behaviour of triglycerides. Time resolved small and wide angle x-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns were obtained from crystallizing binary mixtures of trilaurin and trimyristin at different temperatures. Two β’ phases were formed simultaneously in most cases. The composition and amount of these crystalline phases were estimated using an empirical model developed based on XRD measurements. The (LKS) model was partially successful in describing the formation of one of the crystalline phases in all experiments but failed at describing the simultaneous formation of both crystalline phases, thereby highlighting a need for improved models.