Preparation of the sodium salt of high acyl gellan and characterization of its structure, thermal and rheological behaviors

• A method without alcohol precipitation to obtain Na-high acyl gellan is proposed.
• Na-high acyl and commercial gellan showed different X-ray diffraction patterns.
• Na-high acyl gellan shows slight structure modification with respect to commercial form.
• Reduction in ion content modifies significantly transition temperatures.
• Reduction in ion content has lower impact on gel viscoelasticity.

This work presents a method to obtain the sodium salt of high acyl gellan (NaHAG) from a commercial preparation, LT-100, by ionic exchange and freeze drying without involving alcohol precipitation to recover the modified macromolecule. NaHAG was characterized by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and proton nuclear magnetic resonance. In addition, gel viscoelasticity, sol–gel transition temperatures from rheological temperature sweeps and differential scanning calorimetry, of both preparations was examined. Up to 87% of the initial weight of LT-100 was recovered as NaHAG. The sodium ion content in NaHAG was 3.2 times greater than in LT-100 and more than 90% of potassium, calcium and magnesium ions present in the original sample were removed. Transition temperatures of LT-100 were significantly higher than those of NaHAG. However, LT-100 gels were slightly stronger and elastic than NaHAG gels. Characterization data from different analyses suggest that the treatment method makes possible to obtain NaHAG with only slight structure modification with respect to LT-100, and could be advantageously utilized to obtain other monovalent and divalent salt forms of high acyl gellan for use in fundamental studies on its properties in aqueous environment.