Effect of honey from fluid bed agglomeration to tableting of plant-based food powder: A case study of lotus seed powder

Plant-based food material is developed into tablet based on the consideration that food is medicine. However, the inhomogeneity of plant powders without fractionation and with less additive added aiming for clean label production, both lead to the difficulties on constructing a stable tablet structure. Therefore, lotus seed powder was used as model plant powders, while honey was used in fluidized bed agglomeration to investigate the handling and compressibility of powder. The results showed that increased honey binder (10 %-50 %) resulted in increased particle size accompanied with more irregular particulate shape. With 50 % honey, the largest D50 of agglomerate was obtained with 205.18 ± 9.54 μm in comparison with control sample at 23.28 ± 1.28 μm. In addition, the wettability of lotus seed powder was enhanced where the agglomerated powders were wetted less than 4.56 ± 1.19° within one min. However, the solubility of agglomerate lotus seed powder remained poor due to less influence by fluid bed drying. The agglomerated powder showed lower bulk density and tapping density with better flowability where the Carr index was between 17.964 % and 20.075 %. The improved followability is beneficial to form homogeneous powder matrix. Moreover, the modified powder matrix enabled the agglomerated lotus seed powder (over 20 % honey) more compressibility and higher hardness. The highest hardness (95.32 ± 0.84 N) of powders was observed by 50 % honey agglomeration which was significantly greater than 25.17 ± 0.29 N in raw powder. Moreover, the tablet disintegration time was shortest when 50 % honey agglomeration was added.