Encapsulation of 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol with tetraethyl orthosilicate for CO2 capture

Carbon capture is widely recognised as an essential strategy to meet global goals for climate protection. Although various CO₂ capture technologies including absorption, adsorption and membrane exist, they are not yet mature for post-combustion power plants mainly due to high energy penalty. Hence researchers are concentrating on developing non-aqueous solvents like ionic liquids, CO₂-binding organic liquids, nanoparticle hybrid materials and microencapsulated sorbents to minimize the energy consumption for carbon capture. This research aims to develop a novel and efficient approach by encapsulating sorbents to capture CO₂ in a cold environment. The conventional emulsion technique was selected for the microcapsule formulation by using 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) as the core sorbent and silicon dioxide as the shell. This paper reports the findings on the formulated microcapsules including key formulation parameters, microstructure, size distribution and thermal cycling stability. Furthermore, the effects of microcapsule quality and absorption temperature on the CO₂ loading capacity of the microcapsules were investigated using a self-developed pressure decay method. The preliminary results have shown that the AMP microcapsules are promising to replace conventional sorbents.     

Hydrophobins stabilised air-filled emulsions for the food industry

Hydrophobin HFBII has been extracted from a culture of Trichoderma reesei. The protein has been used to construct air cells of approximately 1–100 μm in size, with approximately 40% of the air cells falling within the 1–2 μm range. We have termed these suspensions air-filled emulsions and propose their use for fat replacement in emulsion based food structures. The air cells in the air-filled emulsion have a surface elasticity, given by the hydrophobin film that helps prevent disproportionation and ripening. The air-filled emulsions show little if any change in individual air cell size when stored for up to 4 months at room temperature. Moreover the interface to the air cells is robust and capable of surviving long, high shear processing steps. Production of the hydrophobin film is an extremely rapid event and ordinarily it is difficult to control during emulsion formation. Here we have used a sonication process to produce the air cells. This process then allows us to control the hydrophobin assembly kinetics in order to ensure that they are not removed from the interface after aggregation, and thus rendered inactive. Using the air-filled emulsions we have created a, so called, tri-phasic system with up to 60% included phase of air and oil in an aqueous continuum and showing a greater than 50% reduction in lipid content when compared to a rheologically similar oil water emulsion. The tri-phasic emulsions are stable for up to 45 days in terms of droplet size and with no loss of air phase.     

Development and Characterization of Phytosterol-Enriched Oil Microcapsules for Foodstuff Application

Phytosterols are lipophilic compounds contained in plants and have several biological activities. The use of phytosterols in food fortification is hampered due to their high melting temperature, chalky taste, and low solubility in an aqueous system. Also, phytosterols are easily oxidized and are poorly absorbed by the human body. Formulation engineering coupled with microencapsulation could be used to overcome these problems. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of encapsulating soybean oil enriched with phytosterols by spray-drying using ternary mixtures of health-promoting ingredients, whey protein isolate (WPI), inulin, and chitosan as carrier agents. The effect of different formulations and spray-drying conditions on the microencapsules properties, encapsulation efficiency, surface oil content, and oxidation stability were studied. It was found that spherical WPI-inulin-chitosan phytosterol-enriched soybean oil microcapsules with an average size below 50 μm could be produced with good encapsulation efficiency (85%), acceptable level of surface oil (11%), and water activity (0.2–0.4) that meet industrial requirements. However, the microcapsules showed very low oxidation stability with peroxide values reaching 101.7 meq O₂/kg of oil just after production, and further investigations and optimization are required before any industrial application of this encapsulated system.     

Development of a new bio-microscope for 3D geometry characterization of fruit single cells

Fruit cells are living irregular three-dimensional (3D) transparent objects which makes them challenging to determine their real 3D size and shape through only two-dimensional (2D) images using the existing biological microscope. This study deals with a newly self-developed biological microscope including a microscope imaging system, a light source system, a stage and a support base for the 3D size characterization of fruit single cells. The main design concept is based on two optical path systems set up at the front (x-axis) and bottom (z-axis) directions of a transparent chamber containing single cells that allow the front view and bottom view of the single cell to be observed. Performance indicators such as mass, size, observation range, objective magnification, total magnification, focal range, focal accuracy, and resolution of the developed biological microscope were estimated. Finally, the 3D geometry size of single tomato cells was measured by the new biological microscope to demonstrate the relative ease at which accurate real 3D geometry information of single fruit cells could be obtained, which echoes its scientific value.