Journal of Food Engineering 118 (2013) 380386

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Journal of Food Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Modelling of rheological behaviour of soursop juice concentrates using

shear ratetemperatureconcentration superposition
Meei Chien Quek, Nyuk Ling Chin , Yus Aniza Yusof
Department of Process and Food Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 10 December 2012
Received in revised form 3 April 2013
Accepted 26 April 2013
Available online 4 May 2013
Keywords:
Rheology
Modelling
Power law
Master curve
Soursop juice concentrates

a b s t r a c t
The effect of temperature and concentration on rheological behaviour of freeze dried soursop juice concentrates were investigated using a rheometer over a wide range of temperatures (1070 C) and concentrations (1050 Brix) at shear rates of 0400 1/s. The Power law is the best tted model to the
rheological data due to the high value of coefcient of determination (R2 = 0.9989). The soursop juice concentrates exhibited shear thinning or pseudoplastic behaviour with n < 1. The consistency coefcients
dependency on temperature and concentration were well described by Arrhenius relationship and exponential relationship respectively. The ow activation energy of soursop juice concentrates were 8.32
30.48 kJ/mol. The superposition technique with Power law model sufciently modelled the overall rheological characteristics of soursop juice concentrates into a single master curve using shift factors based
on double shifting steps with R2 = 0.9184. This technique also showed that the soursop juice concentrates
increases in viscosity and pseudoplasticity behaviour with concentration.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Soursop (Annona muricata L.), known as durian belanda in
Malaysia, is getting popular due to its very pleasant, subacid,
highly aromatic juicy esh and distinctive avour. Due to the easily
get bruised and damaged conditions, the soursop fruit is usually
manufactured into other form of products such as juices, concentrated juices, nectars, purees, syrups, jellies and ice creams (Umme
et al., 1999) to prolong its shelf life. Nowadays, concentrated fruit
juices have become one of the trends to preserve the nutrients and
avours of the fresh fruit. Several methods have been used to concentrate fruit juices such as oven drying, rotary evaporation, crossow ltration and freeze drying. Freeze drying is one of the most
widely used concentration method in the food industry, owing to
its ability to maintain the nutrients, colour and avours of the fresh
fruit. A variety of fruit juices was concentrated using freeze dryer,
for instance, cactus pear juice (Mohammer et al., 2006), guava
juice (Shamsudin et al., 2005), mangoes juice (Dak et al., 2007,
2006) and pummelo juice (Chin et al., 2009).
Rheology, the study of deformation and ow of matter, is very
important for the processing of fruit juices especially the rheological properties of the juice. Rheological properties of uids food is
very useful for food processing and food handling which involves
uids ow in any food processing operations such as pasteurization, concentration and dehydration (Dak et al., 2006) by evaluating

Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 389466353; fax: +60 389464440.

E-mail address: chinnl@eng.upm.edu.my (N.L. Chin).
0260-8774/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2013.04.025

the quality, understanding the structure, designing the equipments

and transport system and determining the pump capacity and
power requirement (Boger and Tiu, 1974). Due to the importance
of rheological properties in fruit juice processing, rheological models are constructed to represent the rheological data. Numerous
rheological models have been used to describe the ow behaviour
of food such as Newtonian (one parameter), Power law, Bingham,
and Casson (two parameters) and HerschelBulkey models (three
parameters). In general, most uids food does not exhibit
Newtonian behaviour. The Power law model has been used most
extensively to describe the rheological behaviour of most fruit
juices especially on handling, heating and cooling operations
because it is convenient, simple and straightforward to be used
(Grato et al., 2007; Steffe, 1996).
Rheological behaviour is inuenced by temperature and concentration during the juice processing. The Arrhenius relationship
is often used to describe the effect of temperature on the consistency coefcient of Power law model of uids food. Kaya and Szer
(2005) suggested that this relationship could be successfully used
to estimate the temperature dependency on the rheological behaviour of sugar rich uids food and claried fruit juices. The effect of
concentration on the consistency coefcient of Power law model of
uids food can be described either by Power law or exponential
relationships. Ibarz et al. (1993) stated that Power law and exponential relationship is usually used to estimate the puree type
foods and concentrated fruit juice respectively. A study found that
the consistency coefcient of frozen concentrated orange juice can
be successfully predicted using the exponential relationship Vitali
and Rao (1984).

M.C. Quek et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 118 (2013) 380386

381

Nomenclature

r
shear stress (Pa)
r0
yield stress (Pa)
l
viscosity (Pa s)
c_ ; c_ 0 and c_ 00 shear rate (s1)
n, n0 and n00 ow behaviour index
K, K0 and K00 consistency coefcient (Pa sn)
K0
frequency factor (Pa sn)
Ea
activation energy (J/mol)
R
universal gas constant 8.314 (J/mol K)

Master curves, is a technique used to model the overall ow

behaviour of complex rheological data of many uids food (Steffe,
1996). The idea of this technique was extracted from a novel principal which is the timetemperature superposition by determining
the shift factors (Bird et al., 1987). Chin et al. (2009) reported that
this technique could be successfully used to model the effect of
temperatures at 675 C and concentrations at 2050 Brix on
the rheological behaviour of pummelo juice concentrates. Despite
limited studies on modelling the interaction effects of temperature
and concentration of tropical fruit juices using this powerful master curve technique, it can be very useful when comparing rheological data of different juice products.
The objectives of this study were to investigate the effect of
temperature and concentration on the rheological properties and
ow behaviours of soursop juice concentrates using available rheological models. The effect of temperature via the Arrhenius relationship and concentration via the Power law and exponential
relationships on the consistency coefcient of soursop juice concentrates were determined. The overall rheological characteristics
of soursop juice concentrates at various temperature and concentration were modelled further using the master curve technique
by shear ratetemperatureconcentration superposition method
using shift factors in extension of Chin et al.s (2009) work on pummelo juice concentrates, by using this double shifting.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Materials
Fresh harvest soursop fruits (Annona muricata L.) at mature
green stage were obtained from Sungai Ruan, Pahang, Malaysia.
The soursop fruits were allowed to ripe at room temperature for
23 days prior to processing. Initial total soluble solids of fresh
soursop fruits was 13.34 0.16 Brix at 25 C.
2.2. Preparation of soursop juice samples
The soursop juice was extracted following the optimised extraction method via microwave oven (Quek et al., 2012). The soursop
fruit was washed thoroughly under running tap water to remove
the impurities on the skin before the fruit was cut into a few blocks
using a sharp knife. The fruit skin was cut and seeds were removed.
About 1.2 kg of fruit pulp was homogenised for 1 min using a high
speed blender (MFM-202, Ta Feng Electrical Appliances Co. Ltd.,
Taiwan). Each 100 g of homogenised pulp weighed using an analytical balance (B204-S, MKII, Mettler Toledo, Switzerland) was added
with 100 ml of distilled water at a ratio of 1:1 (weight to volume) in
a rectangular polypropylene container (0.155  0.100  0.065 m).
The container was then placed centrally on a turntable in a microwave oven (EM-B756A, Sanyo, United Kingdom) at the microwave
extraction power of 850 W for an extraction time of 2 min. The

T
R2
K1
K2
K3
K4
aT
aC

and
and
and
and

Temperature (K)
coefcient of determination
n1 constant in power equation
n2 constant in exponential equation
n3 constant in Arrhenius and power equations
n4 constant in Arrhenius and exponential equations
dimensionless temperature shift factor
dimensionless concentration shift factor

mixture was centrifuged at 6000 rpm for 10 min using a centrifuge

(Biofuge primo, Heraus, United Kingdom) to obtain the juice 1 l of
juice. The juice was then sampled into 10 rectangular polypropylene containers with 100 ml each. The juice containers were placed
and concentrated in a laboratory vacuum freeze dryer (Model SB4,
Pump Model RV8, Edward High Vacuum International, Crawley
Sussex, England), with a drying temperature programmed from
25 C to 24 C for 48 h. During the freeze drying process, the juice
was frozen and the surrounding pressure was reduced to allow the
frozen water in the juice to sublimate. The sublimed ice in the vacuum chamber was then pulled out by using the vacuum pumps. The
total soluble solids of freeze dried concentrated juice obtained was
about 56.30 0.99 Brix. In order to acquire different juice concentrations for rheological test, the concentrated juice was diluted with
distilled water to 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 Brix.
2.3. Rheological measurements
A rheometer (ARG2, TA Instruments, New Castle, USA),
equipped with a peltier concentric cylinder double gap geometry
(rotor inner radius = 20.38 mm, rotor outer radius = 21.96 mm,
rotor height = 59.5 mm, cup inner radius = 20 mm), was used to
investigate the rheological behaviour of the soursop juice concentrates. In each rheological test, 6.5 ml of sample juice was pipetted
into the concentric cylinder cup. During test, a solvent trap was
used to minimize moisture loss. The rheometer consists of a temperature controlled system to control the experimental temperature. The rheological measurements of soursop juice concentrates
were performed at seven levels of temperatures, 10, 20, 30, 40,
50, 60 and 70 C for ve levels of concentrations, 10, 20, 30, 40
and 50 Brix over a shear rate range of 0400 s1 in a continuous
increasing shear rate manner.
2.4. Data analysis and modelling
The entire experiment was conducted and duplicated in an
identical manner from two batches of fruits from the same cultivars. There were some of the variations in the two sets of experimental data obtained. Therefore, one set of the experimental data
was shifted downwards at shift factor of 1.431 0.2533. The mean,
standard deviation and standard deviation of means (error bars)
were calculated using Microsoft Excel 2007 (XP Edition, Microsoft
Corporation, USA).
2.4.1. Modelling of uid ow using rheological models
The experimental data of soursop juice concentrates was tted
to several rheological models, namely, Newtonian, Power law,
Bingham, Casson and HerschelBulkley as shown in Table 1. The
solver function in Microsoft Excel was used for the curve tting.
Generalised reduced gradient 2 (GRG2) nonlinear optimisation
code was adopted in determining the rheological parameters, K,

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Table 1
Coefcient of determinations of soursop juice concentrates obtained by tting the
experimental data to the rheological models.
No.

Model name

Model equation

R2

1
2
3
4
5

Newtonian
Power law
Bingham
Casson
HerschelBulkley

r lc_
r K c_ n
r r0 K c_
r0:5 r0 K c_ 0:5
r r0 K c_ n

0.8734 0.11
0.9989 0.00
0.9378 0.05
0.9548 0.03
0.9989 0.00

n, l and r0. To obtain the best tted lines, the sum of square errors
(SSEs) was minimised. The coefcient of determination, R2 was calculated using R2 1  SSE
, where SST is the total corrected sum of
SST
squares (Walpole et al., 2002). This modelling work on soursop
juice concentrates at concentrations from 10 to 50 Brix has not accounted its thixotropic behaviour although thixotropy is commonly exhibited in concentrated fruit juices and fruit purees
(Lozano and Ibarz, 1994) at total soluble solids greater than
55 Brix (Ramos and Ibarz, 1998).
2.4.2. Effect of temperature on rheological parameters
The effect of temperature on the consistency coefcient, K is described by the Arrhenius relationships

Ea
K K 0 exp
RT


1

To obtain the frequency factor, K0 and activation energy, Ea, Eq. (1)
was linearised. The K0 is the exponential of the y-intercept and Ea is
the product of slope and universal gas constant.
2.4.3. Effect of concentration on rheological parameters
The effect of concentration on the consistency coefcient, K is
described by Power law and exponential relationships

K K 1 C n1

K K 2 expn2 C

Both Eqs. (2) and (3) were linearised to obtain the constants, K1, K2,
n1 and n2. K1, K2 and n1, n2 were obtained from the exponential of
the y-intercept and the slope of the linearised of Eqs. (2) and (3),
respectively.
2.4.4. Combined effect of temperature and concentration on
rheological parameters
For engineering applications, it is very useful to obtain a single
expression describing the combined effect of temperature and concentration on the consistency coefcient, K. The combined effect of
temperature and concentration on the consistency coefcient of
the soursop juice concentrates is described by combining the
Arrhenius and Power law relationships or exponential relationships (Kaya and Belibagli, 2002)

 
Ea
K K 3 C n3 exp
RT


Ea
n4 C
K K 4 exp
RT

4
5

Both Eqs. (4) and (5) were linearised to obtain the constants, K3, K4,
n3, n4 and activation energy, Ea.
2.4.5. Modelling uid ow using master curve equation
A master curve was used to further interpret the rheological data
of soursop juice concentrates at seven different temperatures and
ve different concentrations. A total of 35 average ow curves were
combined by using the superposition technique to form a master
curve in double shifting steps. Firstly, a reference temperature of

50 C and a shear stress basis of 1 Pa were selected. The other six

temperatures (10, 20, 30 40, 60 and 70 C) at common concentration were shifted horizontally along the shear rate axis to the reference temperature of 50 C to obtain the dimensionless shear rate
temperature shift factors, aT,i, dened as the ratio of shear rate at
other temperature at basis shear stress (1 Pa) to the shear rate at
the reference temperature (50 C) as shown in Eq. (6).

aT;i

c_ i
c_ R

At the reference temperature, aT is equal to unity. When

c_ R c_ =aT , where the quantity c_ =aT is known as the reduced shear

rate, c_ 0 . The master curve was then plotted as shear stress versus
shear rate divided by the dimensionless shift factor. The horizontal
shifting with aT combined the seven temperatures to overlap on
one master curve for each concentration. Power law equation
(Eq. (7)) was then tted to the ve concentration master curves
to obtain the expression of rheological behaviour of soursop juice
concentrates in terms of consistency coefcient, K0 and ow behaviour index, n0 .

r K0

 n0
c_
aT

In the second shifting step, the ve developed concentration

master curves were shifted to a reference concentration of 30 Brix
at a shear stress basis of 1 Pa to construct a single master curve
using the concentration shift factor of aC following Eq. (6), where
the second reduced shear rate, c_ 00 , is quantied as c_ =aT =aC . The nal
master curve was plotted as shear stress versus shear rate divided
by the dimensionless temperature shift factor and concentration
shift factor to estimate the rheological behaviour of soursop juice
concentrates at concentration of 1050 Brix and temperature of
1070 C. The nal master curve was also tted to the Power law
equation (Eq. (8)) to obtain a single expression of rheological
behaviour of soursop juice concentrates in terms of consistency
coefcient, K00 and ow behaviour index, n00 .

rK

00

c_

n00

aT  aC

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Rheological behaviour of soursop juice
The rheological data of soursop juice concentrates obtained
were tted to several rheological models such as Newtonian,
Power law, Bingham, Casson and HerschelBulkley and the coefcient of determinations, R2 which are shown in Table 1. All the
models showed high values of goodness of tting with R2 > 0.9, except the Newtonian model (R2 = 0.8734). Both Power law and HerschelBulkley models were more perfectly tted to the
experimental data with R2 = 0.9989. However, HerschelBulkley,
a three parameters model, yielded negative yield stress values
which are meaningless in a physical standpoint (Grato et al.,
2007). Therefore, the Power law is the best tted model to the
experimental data.
Fig. 1 shows the rheograms of experimental shear stress and
shear rates of soursop juice concentrates for ve concentrations
at temperature range of 1070 C tted using Power law model.
As the shear stress and shear rates of the rheograms show concave
curves downwards, soursop juice concentrates therefore exhibited
a non-Newtonian, shear thinning and pseudoplastic behaviour. A
work done by Grato et al. (2007) also found that soursop juice
at various concentration (9.349.4 Brix) and temperatures (0.4
68.8 C) behaves pseudoplastically.

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M.C. Quek et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 118 (2013) 380386

1.8
1.5

(b)

(c)

1.2
0.9
0.6

12

Shear stress (Pa)

Shear stress (Pa)

Shear stress (Pa)

15

(a)
3

0.3
0.0
100

200

300

400

0
0

500

100

200

300

400

500

Shear rate (s-1)

Shear rate (s-1)

100

200

300

400

500

Shear rate (s-1)

100

40

(d)

(e)
80

Shear stress (Pa)

30

Shear stress (Pa)

0
0

20

10

60

40

20

0
0

100

200

300

400

500

100

200

300

400

500

Shear rate (s-1)

Shear rate (s-1)

Fig. 1. Rheograms of shear stress versus shear rates plots of soursop juice concentrates at various temperatures, 10 C (j), 20 C (h), 30 C (), 40 C (}), 50 C (N), 60 C (4)
and 70 C (d) for concentration at (a) 10, (b) 20, (c) 30, (d) 40, and (e) 50 Brix and tted with Power law model ().

Table 2
Rheological parameters of Power law equation of soursop juice concentrates at various concentrations and temperatures.
Temperature (C)

Consistency coefcient, K (Pa sn)

10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Flow behaviour index, n
10
20
30
40
50
60
70

Concentration (Brix)
10

20

30

40

50

0.012 0.002
0.010 0.001
0.005 0.001
0.005 0.000
0.004 0.001
0.002 0.000
0.001 0.000

0.078 0.010
0.062 0.005
0.041 0.006
0.031 0.005
0.028 0.003
0.022 0.007
0.017 0.010

0.307 0.035
0.232 0.003
0.189 0.023
0.153 0.003
0.123 0.007
0.087 0.003
0.060 0.000

1.663 0.688
1.456 0.562
1.078 0.317
1.186 0.378
1.040 0.096
1.010 0.378
0.780 0.000

5.219 0.792
3.542 1.188
2.990 0.223
2.775 0.465
2.894 0.919
2.715 0.655
1.938 0.053

0.830 0.03
0.827 0.00
0.874 0.01
0.860 0.01
0.880 0.05
0.972 0.04
1.032 0.06

0.671 0.03
0.671 0.04
0.689 0.03
0.702 0.04
0.698 0.03
0.704 0.06
0.721 0.08

0.616 0.01
0.627 0.01
0.623 0.01
0.622 0.01
0.615 0.01
0.640 0.00
0.663 0.01

0.516 0.07
0.503 0.04
0.494 0.06
0.439 0.08
0.438 0.04
0.428 0.09
0.424 0.01

0.472 0.05
0.486 0.04
0.472 0.02
0.452 0.03
0.403 0.06
0.399 0.03
0.427 0.02

The values of two rheological parameters, consistency coefcient, K, and ow behaviour index, n, obtained from the Power
law curve tting are presented in Table 2. All the n values are below 1 supporting the pseudoplasticity except for the lowest concentration of 10 Brix at the highest temperature of 70 C, where
the soursop juice concentrates seemed to approach Newtonian
behaviour with n = 1.032.
Fig. 2a illustrates that the consistency coefcient of soursop
juice concentrates decreased as the temperatures increased and
concentrations decreased. Consistency coefcient values are very
important in juice processing especially during pasteurization.

For instance, the increase in consistency coefcient will cause the

owing rate in the pipe to decrease due to more ow resistance
(Earle, 1985). This will lead to the longer heating and holding time
during pasteurization. Fig. 2b shows that the ow behaviour index
of soursop juice concentrates increases with temperatures for all
level of concentrations except the 40 Brix and 50 Brix. The
increase in ow behaviour index means reduction in pseudoplasticity. The pseudoplasticity reduction of soursop juice concentrates
is most signicant at concentration of 10 Brix. This is in agreement
with Chin et al.s (2009) ndings where pummelo juice at lower
concentration showed more prominent pseudoplasticity reduction.

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M.C. Quek et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 118 (2013) 380386

1.2

(a)

Flow behaviour index

Consistency coefficient (Pa s n)

5
4
3
2
1
0

(b)

1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Temperature ( oC)

Temperature ( C)

Fig. 2. Effect of temperature at 10 Brix (N), 20 Brix (e), 30 Brix (), 40 Brix (h) and 50 Brix (j) on the (a) consistency coefcient and (b) ow behaviour index of soursop
juice concentrates.

and K2 and n2 from exponential relationship with R2 for seven temperatures levels are listed in Table 4. As the temperature increased,
K1 and K2 decreased while the n1 and n2 increased. Both the Power
law and exponential relationships suggest good tness in the constants obtained. However, a close observation on each of the R2
shows that the exponential relationship (R2 = 0.9851 0.0066)
seems to describe the effect of concentration on the consistency
coefcient of soursop juice concentrates better compared to the
Power law relationship (R2 = 0.9665 0.0054). The same observations were reported by Kaya and Belibagli (2002) on grape juice
and Juszczak and Fortuna (2004) on cherry juice which suggested
that exponential relationship gives slightly better t than the Power
law relationship in describing consistency coefcient of food juices
with respect to its concentration. Ibarz et al. (1993) identied that
the exponential relationship is suitable for concentrated fruit juice
while the Power law relationship is usually used for puree type
foods.

Table 3
Parameters of Arrhenius equation, frequency factor and activation energy of soursop
juice concentrates at various concentrations.
Concentration (Brix)

K0 (Pa sn)

Ea (kJ/mol)

R2

10
20
30
40
50

5.21E08
2.70E05
5.16E05
6.86E02
5.80E02

30.48 3.31
21.18 5.58
20.86 1.80
8.323 4.32
10.23 0.85

0.9260
0.9619
0.9648
0.7841
0.7859

3.2. Effect of temperature on rheological parameters

The Arrhenius relationship was used to describe the effect of
temperature on the consistency coefcient of the Power law model
of soursop juice concentrates. Table 3 shows the parameters, frequency factor and activation energy from Arrhenius relationship
with R2 for ve concentration levels. All concentration levels of
soursop juice concentrates show good tness (R2 > 0.9) to the
Arrhenius relationship except at higher concentrations of 40 Brix
and 50 Brix having R2 values of 0.7841 and 0.7859, respectively.
Activation energy indicates the sensitivity of the viscosity to temperature changes. Higher activation energy means that the apparent viscosity is relatively more sensitive to temperature (Kaya and
Szer, 2005). From this study, the activation energy obtained is
range from 30.48 to 8.32 kJ/mol K. The activation energy obtained
has an inconsistent trend with the concentration. Several previous
studies also reported the similar inconsistency in activation energy
changes with increasing concentration (Altan and Maskan, 2005;
Belibagli and Dalgic, 2007; Giner et al., 1996; Ibarz et al., 1994;
Kaya and Belibagli, 2002; Singh and Eipeson, 2000).

3.4. Combined effect of temperature and concentration on rheological

parameters
The combined effect of temperature and concentration on the
consistency coefcient of soursop juice concentrates was described
by two models that combined the Arrhenius and Power law relationships or exponential relationships. A non-linear regression
analysis was performed by tting the experimental data to the linear form of Eqs. (4) and (5) to obtain the constants, K3, K4, n3, n4 and
activation energy, Ea and the yields the following Eqs. (9) and (10).



18:09
R2 0:9621
K 2:27  1010 C 4:088 exp
RT


18:09
R2 0:9798
0:1659C
K 9:614  107 exp
RT

3.3. Effect of concentration on rheological parameters

The effect of concentration on the consistency coefcient of the
Power law model was described by both Power law and exponential
relationships. The constants, K1 and n1 from Power law relationship

9
10

The activation energy, Ea for both equations give similar values.

Both equations suggest good tness to the experimental data

Table 4
Parameters of power equation and exponential equation of soursop juice concentrates at various temperatures.
Temperature (C)

10
20
30
40
50
60
70

Power equation: K = K1 C n1

Exponential equation: K = K2 exp (n2C)

K1

n1

R2

K2

n2

R2

1.50E06
1.98E06
4.69E07
3.65E07
1.89E07
3.70E08
1.88E08

3.74 0.10
3.65 0.33
3.93 0.09
3.97 0.13
4.13 0.04
4.55 0.16
4.64 0.06

0.9688
0.9692
0.9761
0.9611
0.9620
0.9661
0.9623

1.65E06
1.43E06
2.83E07
1.80E07
8.47E08
1.42E08
5.18E09

0.152 0.005
0.148 0.014
0.159 0.004
0.162 0.007
0.168 0.001
0.184 0.009
0.188 0.001

0.9914
0.9891
0.9881
0.9871
0.9871
0.9804
0.9723

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Table 5
Temperature and concentration shift factors (aT and aC) of soursop juice concentrates for various temperatures and concentrations.
Concentration (Brix)

aT
Temperature (C)

10
20
30
40
50

aC

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

0.396
0.269
0.234
0.408
0.422

0.483
0.385
0.353
0.518
1.033

0.726
0.622
0.498
0.940
1.370

0.845
0.871
0.702
0.741
1.459

1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000

1.221
1.390
1.567
1.069
1.140

1.266
1.673
2.411
1.967
2.963

Table 6
Parameters of power equation tting to master curve data of soursop juice
concentrates at various concentrations.

100

Shear stress (Pa)

20.37
6.208
1.000
0.207
0.016

Concentration
(Brix)

Consistency
coefcient, K0

Flow behaviour
index, n0

Coefcient of
determination, R2

10
20
30
40
50

0.004
0.031
0.135
0.310
1.636

0.887
0.678
0.607
0.681
0.577

0.9963
0.9990
0.9991
0.9186
0.8441

10

100

10

100

1000

10000

Shear rate/a T (s-1)

Fig. 3. Master curves of shear stress versus shear rate/temperature shift factor of
soursop juice concentrates at ve concentrations, 10 Brix (N), 20 Brix (}), 30 Brix
(), 40 Brix (h) and 50 Brix (j) with a reference temperature of 50 C.

obtained. However, it seems that the exponential type relationships

(Eq. (10)) describes better the combined effect of temperature and
concentration on the consistency coefcient of soursop juice concentrates than the Power law type relationships (Eq. (9)) with
slightly higher values of coefcient of determination, R2. These ndings were in agreement with several studies on concentrated grape
juice (Kaya and Belibagli, 2002), sloe fruit juice concentrated cherry
juice (Juszczak and Fortuna, 2004) and concentrated sour pomegranate juice (Kaya and Szer, 2005).

Shear stress (Pa)

10

1
1

10

100

1000

10000

100000

Shear rate/a T /a C (s -1)

Fig. 4. Master curve of shear stress versus shear rate/temperature shift factor/
concentration shift factor of soursop juice concentrates (j) and tted with Power
law model Eq. (12) ().

3.5. Master curve modelling of soursop juice concentrate

To model the rheological behaviour of soursop juice concentrates into a general uid characterisation, a master curve technique was used. Since all the shear stress versus shear rate
curves of soursop juice concentrate at different temperature and
concentration had a similar trend (Fig. 1), the shear stress curves
at 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 and 70 C were shifted horizontally along the
shear rates axis to a reference temperature of 50 C. A shear stress
basis of 1.0 Pa was used for determining the shift factor to develop
a master curve. The shear ratetemperature shift factors for soursop juice concentrates curves obtained at different temperatures
are presented in Table 5 for each of the different concentrations.
The shift factors at reference temperature of 50 C curves show
unity (Table 5). Fig. 3 shows the resulting of ve concentration
master curves of shear stress versus shear rates divided by shift

factors in both logarithmic scales for each concentration. The linear

lines obtained for the ve concentrations were attributed to the
curve overlapping by horizontal shifting of the data. The concentration master curves data were then tted into a Power law equation, where the parameters of consistency coefcient and ow
behaviour index were determined and presented in Table 6 with
R2. The consistency coefcient increases and ow behaviour index
decreases with concentration. This implies that as the concentration increases, both the viscosity and pseudoplasticity of soursop
juice concentrates increases. A study done by Chin et al. (2009)
on pummelo juice at temperature of 675 C and concentration
of 2050 Brix also reported the similar ndings that consistency
coefcient increases and ow behaviour index decreases with concentration. As shown in Table 6, the high values of R2 show that
Power law equation was adequately tted to the master curve data

386

M.C. Quek et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 118 (2013) 380386

of soursop juice concentrates. This also indicates that the soursop

juice concentrates curves at different temperatures can be well described by concentration master curve.
Subsequently, the four concentration master curves at 10, 20,
40 and 50 Brix were then shifted again to a reference concentration of 30 Brix at a shear stress basis of 1 Pa. A single nal master
curve (Fig. 4) describing the rheological behaviour of soursop juice
as a function of second reduced shear rate was generated using
concentration shift factors, aC (Table 5). The relationship between
concentration shift factor, aC, and concentration, C, was determined
as in Eq. (11).

aC 171:24 exp0:1774C R2 0:9833

11

This nal master curve was then tted to Power law equation to
derive a relationship between shear stress, shear rate, consistency
coefcient and ow behaviour index and yields the following Eq.
(12) for the overall master curve for the rheological behaviour of
soursop juice concentrates with coefcient of determination.

r 0:3080

c_
aT  aC

0:5062

R2 0:9184

12

The results imply that the rheological behaviour of soursop

juice concentrates can be described by curve shifting based on
the master curve technique, which is also known as shear rate
temperatureconcentration superposition technique. These master
curves are recommended in comparing data from a variety of juice
products (Steffe, 1996) and in particular, the double shifting technique produces a single representation of rheological data covering
a wide range of temperature and concentration.

4. Conclusions
Modelling of rheological behaviour of soursop juice concentrates was studied. The Power law model was the best tted model
for the rheological data with high goodness of tting, R2 = 0.9989
compared to the Newtonian, Bingham, Casson and HerschelBulkley models. The soursop juice concentrates exhibited a non-Newtonian behaviour (n < 1), which is shear thinning and pseudoplastic.
The effect of temperature on the consistency coefcient was satisfactorily described by Arrhenius equation and the values of ow
activation energy obtained were 8.3230.48 kJ/mol. Both the
Power law and exponential equations adequately described the effect of concentration on the consistency coefcient; however, the
exponential equation had a better t with a slightly higher goodness of t (R2 = 0.9851). Rheological modelling using master curve
shows that both viscosity and pseudoplasticity of soursop juice
concentrates increases with concentration. The overall rheological
characteristic of soursop juice concentrates was sufciently modelled using the master curve technique through the double shifting
method to form a single master curve to ease the comparisons of
other juice products.

Acknowledgement
This research was funded by Universiti Putra Malaysias Research University Grant Scheme with Project No. 05-02-111398RU.
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