Microencapsulation of Olive oil with gelatin and sodium alginate by complex coacervation

Most edible oils in spite of all proven health benefits are chemically unstable and sensitive to oxygen, light, moisture, and temperature. Hence, microencapsulation of active ingredients and their delivery need to be employed to stabilize the oil in order to fix the problem.1 In the other hand, lipophilic drugs could not be encapsulated with water-soluble polymers as shell materials. To overcome this problem, olive oil which contains essential vitamins, fatty acids and other natural nutrients, is used as a solvent of these hydrophobic drugs.2The present study aims at synthesizing gelatin A–sodium alginate complex coacervates and encapsulation of olive oil in the polymer system. Optimization of different reaction parameters such as pH and ratio between the polymers and cross-linker concentration was carried out to attain higher product yield.3 The optimum ratio between gelatin and alginate and pH value in this study was set to 3.5 and 3.6, respectively. Microcapsules were crosslinked by sodium tripolyphosphate (PPT). Optical microscopy studies proved the formation of spherical microcapsules of different sizes. It was observed that the effect of using PPT as a crosslinker was desirable whereas increasing its amount in the case of a constant amount of polymer and oil caused the interruption of the electrostatic attraction between proteins and polysaccharides.4 The optical microscopy analysis showed that the size of microcapsules was decreased with decreasing the amount of oil, polymer, and crosslinker. The oil content was sharply decreased with adjusting the PH value of TPP solution. Moreover, the encapsulation efficiency was increased by increasing the total amount of oil however it causes more surface oil.

Keywords:

Microencapsulation , Complex coacervation , Olive oil , Gelatin , Sodium Alginate.