Studies of Encapsulation Efficiency and Swelling Behavior of Riboflavin Encapsulated by Alginate and Chitosan

Abstract

Vitamin B2, also known as riboflavin, has an important function to human tissue development and energy metabolism. Riboflavin is sensitive and unstable to external influences such as light and reducing agents. In addition, most of the absorption of nutrients occurs in the intestines so the release of riboflavin in gastric need to be avoided. To overcome this problem, riboflavin was microencapsulated with sodium alginate and chitosan polymer using ionic gelation emulsification method. The purpose of this research was to study the microencapsulation itself, and also to study the effect of the riboflavin composition used upon the encapsulation efficiency and the effect of pH medium on microcapsules swelling behavior. In this research, microcapsule characterization was also carried out using FTIR and SEM. The FTIR result shows that there are crosslinking which indicated by functional groups changes between the samples during the formation of microcapsules. The SEM result show that the dried microcapsule has rougher and wrinkled surface. In efficiency encapsulation study, microencapsulation was carried out by varying the composition of riboflavin, that is 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 mg. Optimal encapsulation efficiency was obtained at 125 mg with an efficiency encapsulation of 51.56%. The microcapsules sample were also tested for their swelling ability by putting the microcapsules into the solution with various pH ranging from 1.2, 2.5, 4.1, 5.2, 6.8 and 8. The swelling test results showed that the characteristics of microcapsules were suitable for the human digestive system because the higher the pH of the medium, then the higher the microcapsules swelling ability.