Investigation on 3D printing ability of soybean protein isolate gels and correlations with their rheological and textural properties via LF-NMR spectroscopic characteristics
Introduction
3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing, which involves the construction of an object by a layer-by-layer production process. Such a process combines the advantages of phase change and/or chemical reaction to mix material layers together, as guided by 3D model data (Wegrzyn, Golding, & Archer, 2012). 3D printing has been extensively and successfully used in many application areas due to its many advantages, including convenience, flexibility and high efficiency. In the field of food processing, 3D printing has a potential to produce foods that match specific requirements of consumers (Liu, Zhang, Bhandari, & Wang, 2017). This implies the ability of 3D printing to respond to changing consumer demands and attitudes towards foods. It is important to note that today consumers have an increasing interest in health and that different groups of consumers, e.g., children, athletes and elderly, have different sets of requirements that the food industry must respond to. 3D food printing can offer an engineering solution to customized food design and personalized nutrition and serve to accelerate new food product development as well as be a potential means to reconfigure a customized food supply chain (Sun, Zhou, Huang, Fuh, & Hong, 2015).
Recently, 3D printing of various food materials has been conducted. These include turkey meat puree and scallop (Lipton et al., 2010); carrageenan-xanthan-starch (Liu, Bhandari, Prakash, Mantihal, & Zhang, 2019); chocolate (Mantihal, Prakash, Godoi, & Bhandari, 2017); pureed/mashed potato (Dankar, Pujola, El Omar, Sepulcre, & Haddarah, 2018; Liu, Bhandari, Prakash, & Zhang, 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018); blends of fruits and vegetables, including carrot, pear, kiwi, broccoli and avocado (Severini, Derossi, Ricci, Caporizzi, & Fiore, 2018); lemon juice gel (Yang, Guo, Zhang, Bhandari, & Liu, 2019; Yang, Zhang, Bhandari, & Liu, 2018); orange concentrate (Azam, Zhang, Bhandari, & Yang, 2018; Azam et al., 2018); baking dough (Yang et al., 2019); mango juice gel (Yang et al., 2019) as well as other bio-complex food systems (Derossi, Caporizzi, Azzollini, & Severini, 2018) and sources of proteins such as egg white protein (Liu et al., 2019), fish surimi (Wang, Zhang, Bhandari, & Yang, 2018), milk protein and whey protein isolate (Liu et al., 2018). Besides these materials, soy protein isolate (SPI) should also be of interest due to its ability to form gel with good water holding capacity (Utsumi, Damodaran, & Kinsella, 1984). So far, however, there is only one study (Chen et al., 2019) that investigated the use of SPI gel for 3D printing. This is probably due to the fact that SPI gel exhibits higher viscosity and rheological properties that are not suitable for 3D printing. Appropriate modification is therefore needed before SPI gel can be successfully printed.
One possible simple alternative to modify the properties of SPI gel is the addition of salt, which then leads to rapid protein aggregation and gelation; gel stiffness would nevertheless not be affected (Chen, Zhao, Chassenieux, & Nicolai, 2017). Many investigators have indeed used different types of salts to induce gelation of soy protein, including KCl (Braga, Azevedo, Marques, Menossi, & Cunha, 2006; Pires; Vilela, Fazani Cavallieri, & da Cunha, 2011). CaCl2 (Vilela, Cavallieri, & da Cunha, 2011; Speroni & Anon, 2013), NaCl (Chen, Chassenieux, & Nicolai, 2018; Shan et al., 2015), CaSO4 (Hu, Li-Chan, Wan, Tian, & Pan, 2013; Wang, Luo, Liu, Adhikari, & Chen, 2019), MgCl2 (Wang et al., 2019) and NaC6H7O6 (Chen et al., 2019). NaCl is nevertheless of special interest as it is a simple salt that can also help reduce the viscosity and induce gelation of soy protein aggregates. In addition to NaCl addition, the addition of a hydrocolloid as a thickening agent to support 3D printability is of interest; xanthan gum was used as the test hydrocolloid-based thickening agent in this study.
Another important aim of the present study was to establish correlations between 3D printability of SPI gels of different compositions and their rheological as well as low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR) spectroscopic characteristics. Such correlations should prove very useful in predicting the 3D printing capability of the gels a priori. This should in turn lead to a better and easier way to select a material for printing without many trial-and-error printing experiments.
Overall, the purposes of this study were to study the rheological and LF-NMR spectroscopic characteristics of SPI gels with/without xanthan gum (0.5 g/30 g of SPI) and NaCl solution at different concentrations (1, 2 or 3 g in 100 mL distilled water) and to correlate these characteristics with 3D printing ability of the gels. Textural properties of the printed gel samples were also determined.
Section snippets
Soy protein isolate gel sample preparation
Commercial SPI powder type SD-102 (GB/T20371) was purchased from Shansong Biological Co., Ltd. (Shansong, China). Xanthan gum (GB 1886.41–2015) was obtained from Henan Wan Bang Industrial Co., Ltd., while NaCl was obtained from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd.
Sample preparation
A mixture of SPI and xanthan gum as well as NaCl was prepared by first dissolving NaCl in distilled water at different concentrations (0, 1, 2 or 3 g in 100 mL of distilled water). Xanthan gum at 0.5 g, which was the optimum
Rheological properties
Fig. 1 shows the changes in the viscosity of SPI gels with/without xanthan gum and NaCl solution at different concentrations as a function of shear rate. The viscosity significantly decreased with the increased shear rate in all cases, suggesting that the gels are shear-thinning fluids. The sample with only added xanthan gum (SX) had higher viscosity and although it could still be extruded from the nozzle, it did not result in good printed shapes. On the other hand, the samples with NaCl
Conclusion
SPI gel with xanthan gum at 0.5 g/30 g of SPI and 1 g/100 mL NaCl solution could be successfully printed and better matched the designed 3D models than the gels of other formulations. Major peak relaxation time (T2 (MP)) and peak area (A22) showed strong correlations with the rheological properties, which dictate the printing ability of SPI gels. The addition of NaCl indeed led to lower gel viscosity, which is beneficial for 3D printing; such an addition increased T2 (MP) and A22. Prediction of
Author contributions
The experiment was performed by Pattarapon Phuhongsung. Oversight of the project and field experience were provided by Min Zhang and Sakamon Devahastin. Critical review of the manuscript was performed by Min Zhang and Sakamon Devahastin.
Declaration of competing interest
There are no conflicts to declare.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China Program of China (No. 3187101297), China State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology Innovation Project (Contract No. SKLF-ZZA-201706), the 111 Project(BP0719028), Jiangsu Province (China) “Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety and Quality Control” Industry Development Program, National First-Class Discipline Program of Food Science and Technology (No. JUFSTR20180205), all of which
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