Reaction Mechanism and Kinetics Study of Wheat Polysaccharide via Modified Reductor Technique in Bead Making Process

The reaction mechanism and kinetics investigation of the substitution of titanium in wheat flour polysaccharide (referred to here as titaniumation) in aqua medium during bead making process was carried out. The use of the Modified Reductor Technique was implored to study the reaction kinetics. The study was carried out at varying temperatures between 25 – 70oC. The study showed that the titaniumation of the wheat polysaccharide molecules increased with time and temperature. Hence, at 25oC, the degree of titaniumation (DT) of the ring increased from 0.41 % to 0.49 % and at elevated temperature of 70oC, DT increased from 0.58 to 0.94 % as time progressed from 30 to 210 mins, respectively, while keeping both amount of wheat polysaccharide and TiO2 constant, and thus achieving >1.9-fold. This also implies that the titaniumation of wheat polysaccharide using TiO2 is favourable at elevated temperature. The study was able to reveal that the reaction mechanism of the titaniumation of the polysaccharide molecules is an electrophilic substitution reaction, favouring the ortho position, while the kinetics study showed that the titaniumation reaction is of first order reaction.