Effect of concentration on the rheological and physicochemical properties of lemon juice

In industrial operations, a product is submitted to a range of shear rates. The knowledge of the changes in rheology with temperature, frequency and shear rate is needed to design the equipment of operations. The lemon juice is used extensively in the food industry. Information about rheological and physicochemical properties is important for scale up and optimization of processes such as transport and storage of concentrated lemon in commercial applications. The aim of this study was toevaluate the rheological and physicochemical properties of the concentrated lemon produced using vacuum evaporator.
Lemon juice was concentrated to 25, 35, 45, 55 and 65 Brix by a rotary evaporator under vacuum at 65°C. The content of soluble solids in terms of brix using refractometer, pH, acidity in terms of citric acid, color in terms of a* , b* and L*, flow behavior and viscoelasticity as function of strain, frequency and temperature using rheometer were investigated. Mean comparison carried out using the least significant difference.
As brix increased, pH reduced and acidity increased. An increase in the concentration resulted in a decrease in L* and b* parameters and an increase in a* parameter. Enzymatic browning in this study could be ignored due to the sensitivity of enzymes to temperatures above 50°C. Millard's non-enzymatic browning (formation of hydroxyl methyl furfural and its polymerization) and the degradation of pigments might be a major contributor to color variation, although a decrease in moisture content and an increase in soluble solids are other reasons for darkening of color. Based on coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE), we could state that the Newtonian and Bingham models had the best fit with laboratory data of the stress-strain obtained for the control sample with the 7Brix, and the samples with 25 and 35 Brix. Newtonian and Bingham viscosity increased as brix increased (p