Microencapsulation of grapefruit essential oil in alginate-starch and alginate-silica matrix

Abstract

Microencapsulation of essential oils have many applications in industry. Moreover if from it added value in the production chain to material that would otherwise be waste or by-products of low price. The present work studies the microencapsulation of grapefruit essential oil, a by-product of the juice-making process, in a sodium alginate matrix with added silica, a component of the rice husk, agricultural residue from the northeast of Argentina and with starch. Tukey comparisons are made between efficiency and yield percentage and the results show no differences between the efficiencies that remains in all cases over 96% but differences are seen in yield. The controlled releases of the essential oil from the microcapsules are also compared, showing a better performance with the matrices containing solid and dry.