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Lactose-free milk powders are an interesting topic, as the industry still struggles with the enhanced stickiness of the material. To better understand this topic, an industrial scale spray-dryer was used to assess the influence of process parameters on the powder properties of lactose-free milk. A simple design of experiments was conducted varying the inlet temperature in combination with the atomization flow rate. The intention was to set different driving forces for drying in combination with the different surfaces are for mass transport. Yield is typically the process bottleneck, but from results, high inlet temperature combined with small droplet size resulted in a 50.73% yield. Powder's moisture contents were between 0.53% and 5%, and water activity between 0.21 and 0.43, being all values within a safety threshold for storage. From bulk and tap density results, all powders revealed to be cohesive with the Hausner ratio above 1.5. Color measurements revealed off white samples, with a tendency to become brown when higher inlet temperatures are used, possibly due to Maillard reactions. Powder particle size ranged from 5.6 to 13.5 mm and revealed extensive agglomeration, possibly due to some protein denaturation at the particle surface. Inlet temperature revealed to be the most influential parameter on all properties.

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This study developed and evaluated the efficiency of methods to produce hydroalcoholic extract of Bishop’s Crown pepper. Analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of independent variables (ethanol concentration of the extracting solution and resting time) over the dependent variables (percent yield, acidity, carotenoids, phenolic compounds, anthocyanin content and vitamin C). The interactions between the variables were studied through seven factorial experiments. Percent yield (Y%), carotenoids, phenolic compounds and vitamin C were the most satisfactory responses found in this research. The ethanol concentration of the extracting solution (ES) presented significant effect in the Y%, showing better results for extracts produced with a 55%-ethanol ES, while carotenoids, phenolic compounds and vitamin C displayed significant differences according to the ethanol concentration, being these substances found in higher concentrations in extracts produced with the use of an 85%-ethanol ES. Therefore, the higher the ES ethanol concentration, higher is the retention of the bioactive compounds.

No abstract