Determination of water self-diffusion coefficient in complex food products by low field 1H PFG-NMR: comparison between the standard spin-echo sequence and the T1-weighted spin-echo sequence

Abstract

In 1990, Van Den Enden et al. proposed a method for the determination of water droplet size distributions in emulsions using a pulsed-field-gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG-NMR) T 1-weighted stimulated-echo technique. This paper describes both the T 1-weighted spin-echo sequence, an improved method based on this earlier work, and, the standard PFG spin-echo sequence. These two methods were compared for water self-diffusion coefficient measurement in the fatty protein concentrate sample used as a ‘cheese model.’ The transversal and longitudinal relaxation parameters T 1 and T 2 were determined according to the temperature and investigated for each sample; fat-free protein concentrate sample, pure anhydrous milk fat, and fatty protein concentrate sample. The water self-diffusion in fat-free protein concentrate samples followed a linear behavior. Consequently, the water self-diffusion coefficient could be easily characterized for fat-free protein concentrate samples. However, it seemed more complicated to obtain accurate water self-diffusion in fatty protein concentrate samples since the diffusion-attenuation data were fitted by a bi-exponential function. This paper demonstrates that the implementation of the T 1-weighted spin-echo sequence, using the different T 1 properties of water and fat phases, allows the accurate determination of water self-diffusion coefficient in a food product. To minimize the contribution of the 1H nuclei in the fat phase on the NMR echo signal, the fat protons were selectively eliminated by an additional 180° pulse. This new method reduces the standard errors of diffusion data obtained with a basic spin-echo technique, by a factor of 10. The effectiveness of the use of the T 1-weighted spin-echo sequence to perform accurate water self-diffusion coefficients measurement in fatty products is thus demonstrated.