Mixture Design Approach for Evaluation of Fish Oil Microencapsulation in Gelatin-Acacia Gum Coacervates

Abstract

Fish oil (FO) was microencapsulated in gelatin (G)-acacia gum (AG) coacervates. To achieve maximum amounts of microencapsulation efficiency (ME) and oil content of microcapsules (OCM), a D-optimal mixture design was used to determine optimum mixtures of formula composition. Moreover, particles size of microcapsules in some formulas was measured. Suitable ME and OCM could be achieved when encapsulants concentration, G/AG ratio, and encapsulants/FO ratio were between 3.2% and 6.7% w/w and in the ranges of 1.50–3.03 and 0.50–1.66, respectively. The particles had a mean diameter in the range of 6.84–13.59 µm.

Keywords:

• Complex coacervation
• encapsulation
• formula design
• long chain omega-3
• optimization

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to acknowledge Mr. Bahman Bahrami for his good technical guidance.

Notes

^a F-AG/G/FO/water (by w/w %).

^b SD = standard deviation (n = 3).

^c Volume–length mean diameter of microcapsules per µm.

^d NM = Not measured.

^a p Values less than 0.0500 indicate the model terms are significant; p values greater than 0.1000 indicate the model terms are not significant.

^b AG.

^c G.

^d FO.

^e Water.