Technological properties of high pressure homogenizers: the effect of fat globules, milk proteins, and polysaccharides

Homogenization has been used by the dairy and food industry since the middle of the century. The discovery of the technology goes back to the beginning of the century when Auguste Gaulin presented it at the Paris World Fair in 1900. Although the technology was used to stabilize food emulsions, it was only after about 1970 that an understanding of the mechanisms involved was obtained through fundamental research studies. More recently, in the early 1990s, a new generation of homogenizers, referred to as high pressure homogenizers (HPH), has been developed. This new technology has a different reaction chamber geometry which can attain pressures 10-15 times higher than classical homogenizers. These HPH have opened up new areas of application for the dairy and food industry. The technology permits the production of finer emulsions, and the modification of not only lipid globules but also food constituents. Recent work has demonstrated that HPH can affect protein or polysaccharide denaturation, aggregation and microparticle formation. It has also been shown that the technology can be applied to the formation of complexes between proteins and polysaccharides. These effects on the constituents lead to a modification of their functional properties. The present paper provides an overview of HPH technology and its effect on the functional properties of lipids, proteins and polysaccharides. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.