Effect of calcium chloride on rheological behavior of sodium alginate

Sodium Alginates are widely used in several industries as gelling agent, coagulant, thickener and encapsulation matrices. Since they can be used in aqueous solutions, it becomes more interesting to study their behavior as non-Newtonian fluids and how adding divalent cations such as calcium can influence it. In this work, intrinsic viscosity, apparent viscosity and rheological behavior of sodium alginate in different salt concentrations have been investigated. Obtained data have shown that the salt concentration plays a key role in the crosslinking process of this polymer. Copyright © 2017 VBRI Press.