The Research Of Edible Ink And Its Properties

Edible ink is a kind of new pro-environment ink, which can be directly printed on the surface of food, medicines and others edible substrate with the non-toxic and edible properties. Based on large amounts of data scan and analysis, this thesis confirmed the essential composition of edible ink, made a reasonable selection of its materials, and developed edible ink through a large number of experiments. Research and analysis on its rheology and other related performance were also be presented.The results show that:the edible ink with water, pigment, xanthan gum, sugar, soy oil as raw material had stable system, good viscosity, and long time storage with non-hierarchical. The content of xanthan gum in this system should between0.05%to0.5%of the total weight. When the content of xanthan gum was less than0.05%of the total weight, the ink couldn’t emulsify well; when the content of xanthan gum exceeded0.5%of total weight, the ink became a gel and couldn’t flow. This system of edible ink presented the characteristic of non-newtonian fluid, and the viscosity of ink decreased with the shearing force increasing. The research on the thixotropy of ink illustrated that the ink had good thixotropy and the thixotropy loop of ink changed with the increasing of the action time and the shear rate. In addition, this system of ink had good color rendering, and could be stable with pH changed. And when the contents of the soybean oil and the sugar were about33%and28%of the total weight of the ink seperately, the ink could be printed on the surface of food successfully.