Analysis of the physical and chemical properties of natural polysaccharides and the effect of dispersed glauconite mineral on them

The object of research is natural polysaccharides. One of the problems is the high cost and not always environmental friendliness of foreign analogues of these substances. Therefore, the methods of purification of polydisperse systems with the help of dispersed minerals, in particular separated dispersed mineral glauconite, purified and enriched up to 60 % of the initial content, are proposed. The study used aqueous solutions of dextran and pectin, which added glauconite in the amount of 0.3 to 0.9 % by weight of the solution, heated to 60 ºC and kept for 10 minutes. Using glauconite in the amount of 0.3 % by weight of the solution gave high quality indicators. Thus, the dependence of the viscosity of polysaccharides dextran and pectin on the concentration of the introduced mineral was studied. The lowest value of viscosity is observed when adding 0.3 % glauconite to the mass of the solution, with increasing concentration, the viscosity increases. The process of interaction of dextran molecules with the surface of glauconite is due to the fact that the proposed method of studying the viscosity has a feature that connects neighboring mineral particles through the dextran bridge and the formation of a stable gel structure. These structures are manifested in the form of partial groups of glauconite. This provides the ability to obtain such an indicator as adsorption. The mechanism of interaction of dextran with glauconite is confirmed by the dependence of the amount of dextran adsorbed on the surface of the mineral. Thus, at low concentrations of glauconite – up to 0.3 % adsorption of dextran on the surface increases, and with increasing concentration of glauconite – greatly decreases. This is crucial for the technological parameters of the mineral when using it in preparation processes, in comparison with similar adsorbents of unnatural origin. This will provide the benefits of glauconite over the use in the food industry and the regulation of the physicochemical properties of industrial polydisperse solutions as inexpensive additives of natural origin (stabilizers, thickeners, etc.) that are harmless to human health.