Development and characterization of powder honey produced by spray drying and spray chilling methods

• Grant number: 17/19266-1
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2018
• Status: Discontinued
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Food Science and Technology - Food Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Carmen Cecilia Tadini
• Grantee: Taíse Toniazzo
• Home Institution: Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/07914-8 - FoRC - Food Research Center, AP.CEPID
• Associated scholarship(s): 19/26525-9 - "effects on digestibility of powder honey in semi -dynamic model", BE.EP.PD

Abstract

Healthy consumers have been requiring natural products with high nutritional value, functional properties and sensory. Honey is a natural product that has many benefits effects on health, besides the taste and aroma are very peculiar. Among the benefits that stand out in honey, the antibacterial and antioxidant effects are mainly found due to the presence of substances in its composition such as flavonoids, acid ascorbic and carotenoids. Honey in its natural form has high viscosity and density, implying in technological challenges in the handling, transport and commercialization. Besides that, the honey can present undesirable changes in its properties due to the crystallization or also the appearance of toxic substances resulted from long storage time. For these reasons, an alternative to minimize such difficulties is the use of honey in powder form. In addition to the protection, powder honey can be characterized by freely flowing, easy handling, weighing and cleaning, as well as reduction of the volume and storage costs. Also, powder honey can be applied in a wide range of foods (solid, liquid and pasty), making them attractive and with high quality. However, there is a need to develop processes in large scale to obtain powder honey; among the possible methods to be used with such objective are spray drying and spray chilling methods. Both methods have many advantages associated with the technological process such as good performance, fast, low cost and both can be easily implemented in industrial scale. Also, such methods are very reproducible since that they are associated with easy adjust of particle size. The main objective of this project is to develop and characterize powder honey by spray drying and spray chilling. The process parameters, as well as the types/concentrations of the carrier agents will be defined to achieve the best encapsulation efficiency. The powder honey that will achieve high encapsulation efficiency and a good visual appearance will be characterized physico-chemically. Finaly, the physical characteristics of the particles will be evaluated.