Research on preparation of curcumin powder by spray drying method with the support of gum Arabic and maltodextrin and improvement in its solubility

Abstract

The suspension of curcumin being created tends to clump together into larger particles and settle down. One way to improve this shortcoming is to spray-dry the suspension system. The aim of this study is to optimize the powder forming process from the spray drying method. The suspension was converted to a powder with maltodextrin as a carrier. Optimization results, realized via a response surface methodology, showed that a maximal curcumin content of 4.667% could be attained under the following conditions: intake air temperature 150 °C, drying air flow of 290 m3/h and feed flow rate of 0.7 L/h. Under these conditions, the particles of obtained powder has the median size of 1.900 μm by LDS method and FESEM also showed that curcumin particles had a nearly spherical shape with a size range of 1 - 3 μm.