## 3 Results and Discussion
### Influence of the Pectin/Emulsion Mass Ratio
On the other hand, as can be seen in Figure 7, all emulgels exhibited aggregation of particles with aging and this process was greater with increasing the pectin content. This result may be explained by taking into account not only the possible aggregation of emulsion droplets but also the sheared gel microstructural evolution, both at the intra-particle level as at inter-particle interactions level. It is worth highlighting that the 75P/25E emulgel, which contained the highest proportion of pectin gel, changed its particle size distribution from day 1 to the next day on which the measurement was taken, namely day 6, but afterwards the changes were not so noticeable. This result may be explained by taking into account that this occurs in the formation of a quiescent gel. It is known that the formation of the gel network is not immediate, but requires time, which can vary from hours to days, until those interactions that give rise to the network  
Figure 6: (**A**) Particle size distributions for lemon essential oil emulgels at different pectin gel/emulsion mass ratios. (**B**) Mean diameters and span as a function of the pectin gel/emulsion mass ratio. The bars correspond to standard deviation. The tests were carried out at an ambient temperature. stabilize. This process could occur within the particles of a sheared gel [46]. [PERSON] et al. (2009) [48] demonstrated that interactions between fluid gel particles not only take place during processing or immediate postprocessing but also that the maturation of the structure can involve a significant time once processing is completed. They also corroborated that fluid gels with shorter processing times, by having less time to form, are more reactive once the processing is finished. This circumstance occurs during the formation of the sheared pectin gel since calcium ions are added for 30 s at 8000 rpm. For this reason, this emulgel (75P/25E) needs a long time to mature its structure. The evolution of the flow curves with the aging time of the three emulgels is shown in Figure 8. In these figures, the apparent viscosity is plotted against the shear rate on a double logarithmic scale. Emulgels exhibited a shear thinning behavior which is typical of non-Newtonian fluids. This flow behavior was observed by other authors who also studied emulgels [2; 27]. These authors explained the decrease in viscosity with the increase in shear rate by a decrease in contact, and therefore a decrease in interactions, between the polymer chains. In addition, gelled particles may be aligned by shear flow contributing to a decrease in viscosity. On the other hand, all of the emulgels experienced an increase in apparent viscosity with aging time. This result may be due to the existence of the aggregation of droplets and, especially, of gelled particles in the continuous phase of the emulgel. This result is in agreement with laser diffraction results. Note that the viscosity turned out to be higher as the pectin content in the final emulgel increased, pointing out that the rheology of these samples was controlled by the continuous phase and not by the dispersed phase concentration. Figure 7: Particle size distributions as a function of aging time for lemon essential oil emulgels at different pectin gel/emulsion mass ratios. (**A**) 25P/75E; (**B**) 50P/50E; (**C**) 75P/25E. The bars correspond to standard deviation. The tests were carried out at an ambient temperature. Table 2 shows the rheological parameters obtained by fitting the experimental data to the power-law model (Equation (4)). All emulgels exhibited n values lower than 1, confirming a shear thinning behavior. [PERSON] et al. (2021) [29], with emulgels containing close essential oil and carboxymethylcellulose as the gelling agent, also found a pseudoplastic behavior that was also fitted to the power-law model. This behavior was explained by the presence of the gelling agent.