Assessment of powder flow characteristics in incoherent soup concentrates

Soup mixtures represent specific flow characteristics while particles of different sizes and properties form a homogeneous mixture. In such mixtures, particle–particle interactions differ with addition of different fat types. This study was done to present a characterization and comparison of the cohesion index, powder flow speed dependency and caking properties of four different aggregates of fat particles with three different moisture contents, used in various compositions of powdered soup concentrates. ESEM micrographs have shown that different fat types bind particles differently. The moisture content of cream soup concentrates has a significant influence on cake height ratio of all cycles – more moisture causes higher cake height ratios (from r_s = 0.86 to r_s = 0.76; p < 0.05). Cream soup concentrates cake strength values are also significantly influenced by the mixtures moisture content – higher moisture content samples showed higher cake strength values (r_s = 0.73, p < 0.05). There is a significant correlation between compaction coefficients of all speeds and cake height ratios of all cycles for the cream soup concentrates. Combination of measuring techniques (Powder Flow Analyzer, ESEM and Mastersizer) together with Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation, as a method of non-parametric statistics, provides parturient results in characterization of extremely non-homogenous powder mixtures.