Compaction and flow of potato starch and potato granules Compactación y flujo de almidón de patata y gránulos de patata

Potato starch and potato granules are materials that are often used in extrusion processes. It is important to quantify their rheology for modelling and prediction of process performance. The compaction behaviour of potato starch was examined at water contents of 4-18% wwb (wet weight basis) for pressures between 1 and 85 MPa. The Heckel deformation stress decreased as the water content increased up to 12% but became inaccurate at 18%. This decrease agreed qualitatively with other observations of the decrease in stiffness of starchy materials over this water content range. Potato granules were examined at water contents of 25-45% wwb and aspects of their rheo logical behaviour characterized using different approaches. A first approximation used the shear viscosity-shear rate power law which produced a law exponent for the resulting pastes (0.1-0.2). The classical Benbow equation was used to estimate yield and wall shear stresses in capillary flow. The latter indicates the presence of slip which was examined more fully as a function of wall shear stress. The Mooney technique was used together with a variation of the method where the shear rate for each die was subtracted from that for a non-slip flow, which was approximated using rough dies. A critical wall shear stress for slip was found to be 0.05-0.1 MPa, making it consistent with published results for other materials.