Exploring the reaction kinetics of whey protein denaturation/aggregation by assuming the denaturation step is reversible

A theoretical study is presented here to illustrate the fundamental differences between laboratory established milk protein denaturation kinetics and the underlined reaction kinetics. Applying the elementary reaction kinetics in the context of reaction engineering, cases where the systems of beta-lactoglobulin (beta-lg) in water and beta-lactoglobulin and alpha-lactalbumin (alpha-lac) mixture in water have been analysed. Assuming that denaturation is reversible to certain extent, for a mixture where many native whey proteins co-exist, the current study shows that the kinetics of beta-lg denaturation can be far more complicated than that described by the simple rate equation commonly applied in previous literature. In order to illustrate that it is possible to use the existing data to obtain the underlined kinetic parameters, a computational procedure has been followed, as an example, to calculate the parameters for the one protein system (i.e., with beta-lg only). Some sensible recommendations for future work have been made. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.