The Microstructure and Rheology of Complex Fluids Containing Na-caseinate

Emulsions are widely utilised in commercial environments, such as in the food and cosmetic industries. In their simplest form, emulsions are a system consisting of two immiscible liquids in the presence of emulsifiers. To form an emulsion, an input of energy is required. In this thesis, Na-caseinate was used as the emulsifier and three systems were studied: soybean oil/Na-caseinate/water, palm oil/Na-caseinate/water and tetradecane/Nacaseinate/ water. Four main techniques were used to characterise the stabilised emulsions: laser diffraction particle sizing, PGSTE-NMR, rheology and cryo-SEM. Emulsion systems are extremely complex making control and predictability over their phase behaviour practically difficult. This is because the required overall characteristics of these colloids are strongly dependent on both the energy of formulation and the choice of an appropriate combination of emulsifier, dispersed phase and continuous phase. A full understanding of the microstructure, stability and physicochemical properties of caseinatestabilised emulsions has as yet not been achieved. For example, how does caseinate selfassembly control emulsion stability? How do concentrated caseinate-based emulsions differ from dilute ones and how do the different oils (food grade oils vs. straight chain hydrocarbon) affect the formation of emulsions? The aim of this PhD programme was to obtain data to allow a better fundamental understanding of the underlying parameters defining emulsion behaviour to be obtained ...