Preparation of Unsaturated Fatty Acids/Chitosan Microcapsules: Influence of Solvent

摘要

In this work, the effect of solvent type on the characteristics of unsaturated fatty acids/chitosan microcapsules was evaluated. The unsaturated fatty acids were obtained from carp oil and chitosan was obtained from shrimp wastes. The emulsion containing microcapsules was obtained from an aqueous and an oil phases. In the oil phase, ethanol and hexane were evaluated as solvents. The microcapsules were characterized according to the encapsulation efficiency, peroxide values and scanning electron microscopy. The results revealed that the microcapsules with ethanol and hexane showed encapsulation efficiencies of 79.6 and 69.4%, respectively. The microcapsules with ethanol showed lower peroxide values, and these values were maintained during 30 days. Furthermore, these microcapsules were spherical and irregular, with mean diameter ranging from 0.5 to 2.5mm. These results indicated that the ethanol was the more adequate solvent to obtain unsaturated fatty acids/chitosan microcapsules.