Modelling the effect of temperature on the lipid solid fat content (SFC)

Abstract

The solid fat content (SFC) is an important physical property of lipids, expressing their physical, sensorial, technological and protecting/release properties. In spite of being frequently used, the temperature for a specific SFC is in general obtained by direct interpolation of experimental data, with any modelling and comparison described in literature. The presentwork evaluated three sigmoidal functions (the Gompertz model, a power decay model and the Logistic model) for modelling the effect of temperature on SFC, using twenty lipids, comprising animal and vegetable native fats and oils, as well as those obtained by interesterification, hydrogenation and/ or fractionation. The three models described well the experimental data, with R² higher than 0.96. However, the Gompertz model describes it better especially at low and high values of SFC. The results here presented are potentially useful for future studies on lipid technology.