Soy lecithin liquid & soy lecithin powder
Apr 24, 2019
Lecithin is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues, which are amphiphilic – they attract both water and fatty substances (and so are both hydrophilic and lipophilic), and are used for smoothing food textures, dissolving powders (emulsifiers), homogenizing liquid mixtures, and repelling sticking materials.
Lecithin has emulsification and lubricant properties, and is a surfactant. It can be totally metabolized (see Inositol) by humans, so is well tolerated by humans and nontoxic when ingested; some other emulsifiers can only be excreted via the kidneys.
The major components of commercial soybean-derived lecithin are:
33–35% Soybean oil
20–21% Inositol phosphatides
19–21% Phosphatidylcholine
8–20% Phosphatidylethanolamine
5–11% Other phosphatides
5% Free carbohydrates
2–5% Sterols
1% Moisture
Lecithin is used for applications in human food, animal feed, pharmaceuticals, paints, and other industrial applications.
Applications include:
In the pharmaceutical industry, it acts as a wetting, stabilizing agent and a choline enrichment carrier, helps in emulsifications and encapsulation, and is a good dispersing agent.
In animal feed, it enriches fat and protein and improves pelletization.
In the paint industry, it forms protective coatings for surfaces with painting and printing ink, has antioxidant properties, helps as arust inhibitor, is a colour-intensifying agent, catalyst, conditioning aid modifier, and dispersing aid; it is a good stabilizing and suspending agent, emulsifier, and wetting agent, helps in maintaining uniform mixture of several pigments, helps in grinding of metal oxidepigments, is a spreading and mixing aid, prevents hard settling of pigments, eliminates foam in water-based paints, and helps in fast dispersion of latex-based paints.
Lecithin also may be used as a release agent for plastics, an antisludge additive in motor lubricants, an antigumming agent in gasoline, and an emulsifier, spreading agent, and antioxidant in textile, rubber, and other industries.