Microencapsulated Vegetable Oil Powder

*Ekasit Onsaard and Wiriya Onsaard*

## **Abstract**

Vegetable oil has been increasingly popular among consumption oils as it provides several health benefits such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antivasoconstrictive, antiarrhythmic, antithrombotic, antimicrobial, antihypertension, antiaging, etc. Several applications of vegetable oils in foods, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries have been widely researched as it is made from natural products with a safe and reliable process. However, oxidative deterioration and stabilization of vegetable oil provide short shelf life storage with poor consumer acceptance. Thus, this chapter is aimed to give an overview of stabilization of vegetable oils using microencapsulation techniques mostly focusing on emulsion preparation using multilayer emulsion followed by a spray drying technique to obtain vegetable oil powder. Using different wall materials was discussed along with the application for several vegetable oils. Moreover, the characterization of encapsulated vegetable oil powder was summarized for the final product quality and encapsulated process efficiency.

**Keywords:** microencapsulation, vegetable oil, multilayer emulsion, spray drying, vegetable oil powder

#### **1. Introduction**

Vegetable oils are a group of fats that are extracted from seeds or the other part of a seed plant. In 2018/2019, the world production of major oilseeds is forecasted to 604.67 million metric tons (MMT). Three main oilseed productions are soybean (369.32 MMT), rapeseed (71.70 MMT), and sunflower seed (49.83 MMT) [1]. The main oilseed product exporting countries are USA, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, and Argentina. USA soybean has been exported to China in the total of 1.3 million tons compared to 10.7 million tons of fruits or vegetables in the last year [1]. It is recognized that vegetable oils and their products have an important role to make the economy of many countries. These oils are an important source of energy and a carrier of fat-soluble vitamins [2]. Common vegetable oils include soybean, rapeseed, sunflower seed, corn, sesame, coconut, rice, etc. Currently, vegetable oil consumption has been increasing compared to animal fat consumption. Three exporters of oilseeds including copra, cottonseed, palm kernel, peanut, rapeseed, soybeans, and sunflower seeds are Brazil (75.28 MMT), the USA (57.20 MMT), and Canada (17.13 MMT) [1].

Vegetable oils are an important renewable resource from nature containing ester mixtures derived from glycerol with chains of fatty acid about 14–20 carbon atoms with different degree of unsaturation [3]. There are composed of mixtures

of triacylglycerols (TAG) (>90–95%) with minor diacylglycerols, tocopherols/ tocotrienols, and phytosterol ester (<5–10%). Several health benefits of vegetable oils are gastronomic, nutritional, organoleptic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-vasoconstrictive, antiarrhythmic, antithrombotic, antimicrobial, antihypertension, antiaging, etc. [4]. The vegetable oils and their components have been growing of interest in food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries as of their natural and safety produce, and the acceptance by the consumer has been found increasingly. Although vegetable oils have gained popularity and interest, they are sensitive to oxidative deterioration and generate several degradation products such as aldehyde, ketones, epoxides, hydroxyl compounds, etc. These changes occurring in vegetable oil affect shelf life, sensory properties, and overall acceptability of products. Microencapsulation technique has been applied as it has the potential to delay lipid oxidation rate of vegetable oils. Several studied have shown that vegetable oil can play an important role in protection against oxidation using microencapsulation technique [5–10]. Microencapsulation (ME) is the technique in which small particle or liquid droplets are coated or are embedded in a homogenous or heterogonous matrix to form small capsules in both dry form and wet form products [11]. However, there are several methods of encapsulated vegetable oil powder include emulsification, spray drying, freeze drying, fluidized bed coating, extrusion, cocrystallization, molecular inclusion, coaxial electrospray system, and coacervation [4, 12]. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is conveying an overview of the microencapsulated vegetable oil powder method and technique. This chapter summarizes the preparation of vegetable oil-in-water emulsion stabilized by proteins and other wall materials, providing information on microencapsulated powder using spray drying, and characterization of microencapsulated powder and application is finally discussed.
