Novel Convenient Method to Determine Wettability and Dispersibility of Dairy Powders

This study was carried out to develop a simple, convenient, and reproducible testing device to determine wettability and dispersibility of dairy powders. The testing device consists of a sieve (150 μm) attached to a sample chamber, sensors mounted on a supporting body and a main control unit containing a display panel. The sensors detect the difference in electrical resistance between air and water. A timer is automatically triggered by the sensor when the bottom of sample-loaded chamber contacts water in the petri dish. Wettability and dispersibility of commercial skim milk powders (SMPs) produced at different heating strengths (low-, medium-, and high-heat SMP) are compared using the new testing device. Wettability of the SMPs were correlated with particle size and are found to increase in the order of medium-, low-, and high-heat SMP regardless of the amount of sample tested. Dispersibility of SMPs showed the same trend and high heat-SMP which has the smallest particle size resulted in the lowest dispersibility. Unlike existing methods, the new testing device can determine both wettability and dispersibility of powders and successfully detected differences among the samples.