New insight into the kinetic behavior of the structural formation process in agar gelation.

Experimental investigations based on our custom-built torsion resonator were carried out on the kinetics and relaxation of the structural formation process in three agar-water solutions with agar concentrations of 0.75, 1.0, and 2.0 % w/w under natural cooling. An interesting temperature-dependent oscillatory decaying behavior of the structure development rate (SDR) in the agar gelation process is observed. This oscillatory SDR-decaying behavior is indicative of a sum of multiple SDR-determining relaxation processes and could be quantitatively described by a multiple-order Gaussian-like equation, i.e., $dG^{\prime }/dt\equiv \sum \nolimits _{n=0}^{m}{dG^{\prime }/dt}^{(n)}=\sum \nolimits _{n=0}^{m}K_{n}{\rm exp}[-2(T-T_{n})^{2}/W_{n}^{2}]$. The ${\rm T}_{n}$ dependences of ${\rm W}_{n}$ in the gelation zone were also found to follow the Arrhenius law with activation energies of 39-74 kJ/mol for three investigated samples, indicating the important role of formation or fission of the hydrogen bonding interaction playing in the agar structural network formation. These findings provide insights into the mechanical properties and distinctive structure development rates of agar sols that dynamically and naturally evolve to form gels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]