Journal
JOURNAL OF MICROENCAPSULATION
Volume 19, Issue 4, Pages 415-424Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/02652040210144234
Keywords
alginate; alginate beads; bead size; electrostatic bead generator; encapsulation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The effect of several parameters on the size of alginate beads produced by use of an electrostatic potential bead generator was examined. Parameters studied included needle diameter, electrostatic potential, alginate solution flow rate, gelling ion concentration and alginate concentration and viscosity, as well as alginate composition. Bead size was found to decrease with increasing electrostatic potential, but only down to a certain level. Minimum bead size was reached at between 2-4 kV/cm for the needles tested. The smallest alginate beads produced (using a needle with inner diameter 0.18 mm) had a mean diameter of similar to300 mum. Bead size was also found to be dependent upon the flow rate of the fed alginate solution. Increasing the gelling ion concentration resulted in a moderate decrease in bead size. The concentration and viscosity of the alginate solution also had an effect on bead size as demonstrated by an increased bead diameter when the concentration or viscosity was increased. This effect was primarily an effect of the viscosity properties of the solution, which led to changes in the rate of droplet formation in the bead generator. Lowering the flow rate of the alginate solution could partly compensate for the increase in bead size with increased viscosity. For a constant droplet size, alginates with a low G block content. (F-GG approximate to 0.20) resulted in similar to30% smaller beads than alginates with a high G block content (F-GG approximate to 0.60). This is explained as a result of differences in the shrinking properties of the beads.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available