Food 3D printing using Beeswax Oleogels

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate printing of various food internal structures using the beeswax (BW) oleogels with varying concentrations and explore the possibility of the fat replacement. Therefore, this work descibed the rheological properties of BW oleogels and the lard, as well as the printing precision and texture characteristics of printed products. Rheological measurements such as flow curves, temperature tests, strain tests and frequency tests were performed to evaluate the proper printability of BW oleogels and the lard. Then, the print dimensional deviation was analyzed to evaluate the geometrical accuracy of the printed products and a compression test was performed to assess the texture properties. As a result of rheological studies, the values of the storage modulus (G'), loss modulus (G'') and complex modulus (G*) of the gel increased as the concentration of the BW increased, and the lard was similar to the BW-15. Then, Most of the printed products have been successfully printed and can be used as the printable materials when the BW concentration is at least 11%. As a result of dimensional deviation measurement, the products printed with the infill level of less than 75% and the BW concentrations of more than 15% showed the lowest dimensional deviation for the designed models and the best printing precision. The texture measurement showed that the BW concentrations and infill level significantly affected the hardness, cohesiveness and adhesiveness of the printed product. Finally, for the optimization of multiple responses, the texture characteristics (hardness, cohesiveness and adhesiveness) of the lard printed at 75% infill level were applied to a fixed target value, and the preparation parameters were selected as 59% infill level and 16% BW concentrations. Printed BW oleogels with predictive preparation parameters achieved similar hardness, cohesiveness and adhesiveness as the lard. In conclusion, it has been proven that 3D printing based on the BW oleogel system can produce complex internal structures to adjust the texture properties of the printed samples, and BW oleogels ware suggested that it has excellent potential as a replacement of the fat.