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

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, delta-tocopherol and beta-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 gimin), 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 mu m, depending on the vitamins encapsulated, being its morphology spherical, meanwhile the precipitation yield was within the range of 41-82 g/100 g. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.