Characterization of the caking behaviour of food powders

Many food powders can potentially gain strength and cake during processing, storage and transport to the final consumer, whereby the powders may form lumps and aggregates or be transformed into a caked bulk. This can be very undesirable causing production delays and lost production, and represents a major product quality defect in the eyes of end-users of food powder products. Many food powders and food ingredients contain many different components or may be mixtures of different food powders, which makes it difficult to predict their susceptibility to caking. Water is often a key component in the mechanisms that cause caking of food powders. This is especially important if food powders are exposed to higher temperature, higher humidity environments or to humidity cycles, where they may cake solidly or sorb so much water that they liquify.