Pré-tratamentos na produção de nanocristais de amido de pinhão e feijão.

Abstract

The most common industrially used starches come from corn, wheat, potato, and cassava. Nevertheless, starches from non-conventional botanical origins are receiving more attention of industries and researchers. Associated with this interest, the possibility of expand and modify the starch properties through physical modifications provide for pinhão and Carioca beans advantages in food industry purposes. The use of theses starches as an alternative to raw materials derived from petroleum for packaging and polymer composites is another possible application. Also included in this possibility, there is the production of starch nanoparticles and nanocrystals (SNCs). This study consisted in modifications (pretreatment), characterization and subsequent hydrolysis of pinhão and Carioca bean starches to produce starch nanocrystals. The starch pretreatments of heat-moisture-treatment (HMT), annealing (ANN), sonication (SNT) and mild enzymatic hydrolysis (ENZ) were used to improve the starch nanocrystals characteristics, as well as decrease the acid hydrolysis time and/or increase the hydrolysis final yield. The pretreatments changed the paste, thermal, and crystallinity properties of the starches, which changed according to the modification applied (HTM, ANN, SNT and ENZ). The SNCs were made by 3 M H2SO4 at 5 and 7 days at 40°C and obtained from the resulted removal of the amorphous lamella from the starch granules, what increased the relative crystallinity. The achieved hydrolysis yields were between 10.2 to 14.7% for pinhão starch and 35.2 to 42.3% for Carioca bean. HMT and SNT pretreatments increased the SNCs yield, but they promote a decrease on the SNCs relative crystallinity, whereas the ANN promotes a better thermal stability, mainly due to the high yield after 5 days of sulfuric acid hydrolysis.