Tracking of powder lump formation and dispersion with the use of FBRM technology and video recordings

Poor powder reconstitution remains a challenge for the food and beverage industry – thus in the past decades there has been a considerable increase in the number of studies aiming to understand the mechanisms driving powder reconstitution. However many techniques used are inadequate to fully describe the entire reconstitution process. In the present publication, we introduce a novel approach to study wetting/sinking and dispersing of food powders, by using a standardized agitated vessel equipped with a video camera to record the powder sinking time and an in situ particle size distribution measurements to characterize lump formation and dispersion, directly in the agitated vessel. Whole and skim milk powders are reconstituted under various combinations of temperature and agitation rate in order to construct “limiting regimes maps”, in order to elucidate the mechanisms of reconstitution at various combinations of these parameters.