Browsing by Subject "hyperelastic foam"

Lipid-based solid-fat substitutes (such as oleogels) structurally modified using ultrasonic standing waves (USW), have recently been shown to potentially increase oleogel storage-stability. To enable their potential application in food products, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics, practical and economical production methods are needed compared to previous work, where USW treated oleogel production was limited to 50-500 µL. The purpose of this work is to improve upon the previous procedure of producing structurally modified oleogels via the use of USW by developing a scaled up and convenient approach. To this aim, three different USW chamber prototypes were designed and developed, with common features in mind to: (i) increase process volumes to 10-100 mL, (ii) make the sample extractable from the treatment chamber, (iii) avoid contact between the sample and the ultrasonic transducer. Imaging of the internal structure of USW treated oleogels was used as the determining factor of successful chamber design. The best design was subsequently used to produce USW treated oleogels, of which the bulk mechanical properties were studied using uniaxial compression tests, along with local mechanical properties, investigated using scanning acoustic microscopy. Results elucidated the mechanical behaviour of oleogels as foam-like. Finally, the stability of treated oleogels was compared to control samples using an automated image analysis oil release test. This work enables the effective mechanical-structural manipulation of oleogels in volumes of 10-100 mL, paving the way to possible large-scale lipid-based materials USW treatments.