Study On The Microencapsulation Of β-carotene

β-carotene is one of carotenoids, has a good antioxidant activity. It can be converted into vitamin A that intake of the human body.β-carotene use as a nutritional supplement to give the food coloring and fortification in the food industry. However,β-carotene is highly reactive. It is very unstable to oxygen, heat and light that easily oxidized and heterogeneous.β-carotene is a fat-soluble compounds, resulting in the actual production ofβ-carotene in terms of application and storage has been greatly restricted. Microencapsulation technology is one way to solve the problem. Therefore, this article study the influence of emulsification process, spray drying, different ratio of wall materials to the preparation of microcapsules. Our purpose is to obtain microcapsules of high quality and high content ofβ-carotene. It provides guidance to the industrial production of microcapsules.In the emulsification process, the use of stearyl lactylate (SSL), diacetyl tartaric acid mono glycerides (DATEM) and monoglyceride compound as emulsifier, HLB value of 7.1 when mixed, the micro-emulsion stability is best, 100%, better than monoglycerides and sucrose fatty acid ester mixed as emulsifier. When the adding amount of emulsifier is 6% of the oil phase weight, the emulsion stability is the best, 100%. Oil phase and water phase was emulsified and homogenization, the product has a highest encapsulation efficiency and productivity when more than 20% of total solids concentration in the emulsion, and the emulsion temperature is 70℃.In spray drying process, the correlation of factor affecting the yield of microcapsules is inlet air temperature> spray pressure> feeding quantity, the optimum process parameters of spray drying process is for the inlet temperature of 190℃, spray pressure of 0.2MPa, feeding quantity of 5ml/min, when the effect of pray drying is best, microencapsulation yield was 95.73%. In spray drying process, the wind speed was almost no effect on the yield of microencapsulated products.Using CMS-Na, OSA-Starch, maltodextrin complex as wall material, optimized ratio of 10:20:5, the microcapsules hadβ-carotene content of 4.38% was obtained. The product's embedding efficiency was 92.8% and yield was 78.5%. Compared to the wall material that gelatin and sucrose mixed, the product's content, embedding efficiency and yield are increased.Theβ-carotene microcapsule was obtained that modified starch and maltodextrin as wall material, the content was 4.38%. Microcapsule particle size is 15.54um in D90. It has a good performance on dispersion. With the increase of the content, moisture absorption of microcapsules enhanced. Under natural conditions, microcapsules faded until colorless. In the external conditions on the storage stability ofβ-carotene microcapsules, the temperature has little effect on the microcapsules, and the air has significantly effect on the microcapsules. Light accelerated degradation ofβ-carotene. Compared withβ-carotene crystals, microencapsulatedβ-carotene is greatly improved on stability.