Supercritical anti-solvent process as an alternative technology for vitamin complex encapsulation using zein as wall material: Technical-economic evaluation

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the technical-economic feasibility of supercritical antisolvent (SAS) technique for the precipitation of a vitamin complex containing riboflavin, δ-tocopherol and β-carotenein zein microcapsules. First, the following parameters were investigated for the precipitation of pure zein: pressure (7.0–16.0 MPa), anti-solvent flow rate (20–60 g/min), solution flow ratio (0.5–1.5 mL/min) and concentration of zein in an aqueous ethanol solution (0.02–0.04 g/mL). Then, at optimized SAS condition for zein precipitation (pressure of 16 MPa, temperature of 313 K, zein concentration of 0.02 mg/mL, solution flow rate of 1 mL/min and anti-solvent flow rate of 60 g/min) was performed the co-precipitation of the vitamins with zein. The results showed that the mean particle size of the microcapsules varied from 8 to 18 μm, depending on the vitamins encapsulated, being its morphology spherical, meanwhile the precipitation yield was within the range of 41–82 g/100 g.