Xanthan concentration, effect

Sanchez, C., Schmitt, C., Babak, V., Hardy, J. (1997). Rheology of whey protein isolate-xanthan mixed solutions and gels effect of pH and xanthan concentration. Nahrung, 41, 336-343. 

Achayuthakan, R, Suphantharika, M., and Rao, M. A. 2006. Yield stress components of waxy com starch-xanthan mixtures effect of xanthan concentration and different starches. Carbohydr. Polym. 65 469-478. 

The alternative large scale recovery method to precipitation is ultrafiltration. For concentration of viscous exopolysaccharides, ultrafiltration is only effective for pseudoplastic polymers (shearing reduces effective viscosity see section 7.7). Thus, pseudoplastic xanthan gum can be concentrated to a viscosity of around 30,000 centipoise by ultrafiltration, whereas other polysaccharides which are less pseudoplastic, are concentrated only to a fraction of this viscosity and have proportionally lower flux rates. Xanthan gum is routinely concentrated 5 to 10-fold by ultrafiltration. 

At low ionic strengths, Tm increases exponentially with ion activity. The effect of high concentrations of salts or miscible solvents depends on the influence they have on hydrogen-bonding and may increase or decrease Tm. In the case of xanthan gum, the value of Tm can be adjusted from ambient to over 200°C by the addition of appropriate salts. Table 7.2 presents Tm values for some industrial viscosifiers. 

In a recent study by Sun et al. (2007) of 20 vol% oil-in-water emulsions stabilized by 2 wt% whey protein isolate (WPI), the influence of addition of incompatible xanthan gum (XG) was investigated at different concentrations. It was demonstrated that polysaccharide addition had no significant effect on the average droplet size (d32). But emulsion microstructure and creaming behaviour indicated that the degree of flocculation was a sensitive function of XG concentration with no XG present, there was no flocculation, for 0.02-0.15 wt% XG, there was a limited... 

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