Development of artificial neural network models to predict the concentration range of formation of microemulsions containing babassu oil

Abstract

Microemulsions have gained prominence in the research for biomolecules nanocarriers due to their thermodynamic stability and auto-organization. However, the formation of these systems requires a high experimental effort. To minimise it, an Artificial Neural Network to predict the concentration range of microemulsion formation was developed using weight fraction, hydrophilic-lipophilic balance as model input. We also evaluated the effect of including surfactant viscosity as input. Experimental data were generated using formulations with babassu oil, water, Tween® 80, and Labrasol®. After training, the proposed model presented accuracies up to 93%, with the addition of viscosity reducing the cross-validation variance.