Surface modification of starch by a DBD discharge with the aid of a fluidized bed

Summary form only given. Fine granulated media are commonplace in the food industry, and are typically used for the manufacture of finished food products such as pasta, flours, snacks and many others. The processing and properties of these finished products can be heavily influenced by the characteristics of the granulate that generates them. Thermal, physical and chemical treatments have been used to modify some properties of the finished product and/or the way the powder behaves during the elaboration of the finished food product [1]. In this work, the effect of the exposure of three types of powdered starch (potato, corn and amaranth) with different sizes (100, 25 and 1 μm, respectively) to the action of a plasma discharge in a coaxial dielectric barrier reactor has been explored, given that there are already some reports of interesting effects of plasmas on starch films [2]. The first difficulty was to obtain a homogeneous fluidized bed which ensures good contact between starch granules and the microdischarges inside the DBD, so an optical diagnostic to measure particulate homogeneity within the reactor volume was developed. Physicochemical characterization by electron microscopy, rheological studies, and XRD were used to characterize the effect of exposure of the three types of starch granules to argon, nitrogen and air plasmas.