Application of Biopolymers in Microencapsulation Processes (Chapter 7)

Abstract

Currently, biopolymers, such as chitosan, alginate, whey proteins, gelatines, and gum arabic have attracted the interest of the scientific community as matrices for the microencapsulation, immobilization, or controlled release of numerous active compounds and have been applied in the pharmaceutical, food, biomedical, chemical, and waste-treatment industries.On the other hand, microencapsulation has become a challenging approach to design new materials with biotechnological applications and can be used to increase the effectiveness of many compounds in the industry allowing the reformulation of a large number of products, improving and giving them better and new properties.In this chapter, it is intended to discuss the applicability of the microencapsulation in different systems with food and technological interest using biopolymers as encapsulating agents. The main microencapsulation methods, the most used biopolymers, the controlled release mechanisms and models to evaluate the release are presented.Finally, some of the potential applications of biopolymer particles in food are discussed. (c) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.