Physical and Rheological Properties of Slaughterhouse Swine Blood and Blood Components

Blood, a valuable by-product of livestock slaughter, has numerous food, industrial, and pharmaceutical uses.Physical and rheological properties, including apparent viscosity, density, surface tension, thermal conductivity, andspecific heat, are needed for the design of transport processes and by-product applications such as spray drying,blending, and extrusion. Information about these properties for slaughter by-products, however, is not currently available.Consequently, the objective of this study was to determine these properties for anticoagulated swine blood, blood plasma,and red blood cells between 5 and 35C. The plasma in this study was enriched with hemoglobin from the red cells as aresult of the rupture of red cells during frozen storage of the blood. These fluids all exhibited a pseudoplastic behaviorwhich was affected by both shear rate and temperature; a nonlinear regression model which accounted for both factorswas then determined for each fluid. In addition, these fluids all had density values 1.0 to 6.3% higher, and surface tensionvalues 20.7 to 33.0% lower, than the respective values for water at temperatures between 5 and 35C. Thermalconductivity results were 42.0 to 57.0% lower, and specific heat results were 9.0 to 17.4% lower, than the respectivevalues for water at each temperature. Drying curves were also established for each fluid at drying temperatures of 80,100, and 120C.