Investigation of thermal decomposition as the cause of the loss of crystalline structure in sucrose, glucose, and fructose
type: CreativeWork
description: Simple sugars (e.g., sucrose, glucose, and fructose) are abundantly used as basic ingredients in the food industry and as excipients in the pharmaceutical industry, due to the quality attributes they contribute to the final products, such as sweet taste, flavor, texture, color, shelf-life (e.g., flavor retention via encapsulation), and carrier function of active pharmaceutical components. These quality attributes directly depend on the processing protocol employed, in particular heating conditions, as well as the type(s) of sugar used. Thus, it is important to accurately and completely characterize the sugars prior to use in specific applications. Melting has been commonly used for sugar characterization because it is an easy and quick property to measure, yet is usually repeatable and robust. In general, melting is determined by heating a sugar at a specified scanning rate using a thermal analytical technique, such as Differential Scanning Calorimetry. The sugar loses its crystalline structure (commonly termed melting) by adsorbing heat energy, which yields the critical parameters of the resultant melting peak, i.e., the onset melting temperature (Tm onset), the peak melting temperature (Tm peak), and the enthalpy of melting (∆H). These parameters provide a good deal of information for sugar identification and characterization (e.g., purity, type, size, etc.) purposes. However, the reported melting temperatures for sugars vary widely. This variation has been attributed to a number of causes, such as differences in melting temperature determination methods, origin, impurity, polymorphs, superheating, liquefaction, and thermal decomposition and/or mutarotation in addition to melting. However, a complete explanation of the substantial variation observed in the sugar melting temperatures as a function of heating rates is not currently found in the literature. Of importance to note is that from a thermodynamic viewpoint, the heating rate dependency of the sugar melting …
abstract: Simple sugars (e.g., sucrose, glucose, and fructose) are abundantly used as basic ingredients in the food industry and as excipients in the pharmaceutical industry, due to the quality attributes they contribute to the final products, such as sweet taste, flavor, texture, color, shelf-life (e.g., flavor retention via encapsulation), and carrier function of active pharmaceutical components. These quality attributes directly depend on the processing protocol employed, in particular heating conditions, as well as the type(s) of sugar used. Thus, it is important to accurately and completely characterize the sugars prior to use in specific applications. Melting has been commonly used for sugar characterization because it is an easy and quick property to measure, yet is usually repeatable and robust. In general, melting is determined by heating a sugar at a specified scanning rate using a thermal analytical technique, such as Differential Scanning Calorimetry. The sugar loses its crystalline structure (commonly termed melting) by adsorbing heat energy, which yields the critical parameters of the resultant melting peak, i.e., the onset melting temperature (Tm onset), the peak melting temperature (Tm peak), and the enthalpy of melting (∆H). These parameters provide a good deal of information for sugar identification and characterization (e.g., purity, type, size, etc.) purposes. However, the reported melting temperatures for sugars vary widely. This variation has been attributed to a number of causes, such as differences in melting temperature determination methods, origin, impurity, polymorphs, superheating, liquefaction, and thermal decomposition and/or mutarotation in addition to melting. However, a complete explanation of the substantial variation observed in the sugar melting temperatures as a function of heating rates is not currently found in the literature. Of importance to note is that from a thermodynamic viewpoint, the heating rate dependency of the sugar melting …
author: Lee, Joo Won
language: en
keywords: Thermodynamic melting, thermal decomposition, apparent melting, sucrose, glucose, fructose, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Modulated Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Thermogravimetric analysis, Rapid-scanning DSC
date published: 2010-05-14T20:50:56Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:08Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/15570