Intermolecular And Surface Forces

Emulsions stabilized with solid nanoparticles: Pickering emulsions

by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

Precise and effective control of droplet generation is critical for applications of droplet microfluidics ranging from materials synthesis to lab-on-a-chip systems. Methods for droplet generation can be either passive or active, where the former generates droplets without external actuation, and the latter makes use of additional energy input in promoting interfacial instabilities for droplet generation. A unified physical understanding of both passive and active droplet generation is beneficial for effectively developing new techniques meeting various demands arising from applications. Our review of passive approaches focuses on the characteristics and mechanisms of breakup modes of droplet generation occurring in microfluidic cross-flow, co-flow, flow-focusing, and step emulsification configurations. The review of active approaches covers the state-of-the-art techniques employing either external forces from electrical, magnetic and centrifugal fields or methods of modifying intrinsic properties of flows or fluids such as velocity, viscosity, interfacial tension, channel wettability, and fluid density, with a focus on their implementations and actuation mechanisms. Also included in this review is the contrast among different approaches of either passive or active nature.

Passive and active droplet generation with microfluidics: a review

Glycemic index: overview of implications in health and disease : Is the glycemic index important in human nutrition?

Biomass-based particles for the formulation of Pickering type emulsions in food and topical applications

BACKGROUND: Particle-stabilised emulsions, so-called Pickering emulsions, are known to possess many beneficial properties, including being extremely stable. Starch granules isolated from quinoa have been used as emulsion stabilising particles. The granules were intact, 1 – 3 µm in diameter and modified with octenyl succinic anhydride to increase their hydrophobicity. Starch granules, as opposed to most other particles used to generate Pickering emulsions, are edible, abundant and derived from natural sources. RESULTS: Emulsions produced by high shear homogenisation had droplet sizes of 9 – 70 µm depending on the starch-to-oil ratio. Droplet size decreased with increasing starch-to-oil ratio, but was unaffected by the oil phase volume over a range of 5 – 33% oil (v/v). Although the drops were large and subject to creaming, their size remained unchanged over a period of 7 days. By adjusting the starch-to-oil ratio drops could be made to be buoyancy neutral to prevent creaming. Rheological characterisation indicated a gel structure with an elastic modulus in the range 200 – 2000 Pa depending on droplet size. CONCLUSION: This work has demonstrated the successful use of starch granules to stabilise emulsions which may find applications beyond that of food, for example in cosmetics and pharmaceutical formulations. c � 2012 Society of Chemical Industry

Quinoa starch granules: a candidate for stabilising food‐grade Pickering emulsions

Characterization of starch Pickering emulsions for potential applications in topical formulations

Starch granules are an interesting stabilizer candidate for food-grade Pickering emulsions. The stabilizing capacity of seven different intact starch granules for making oil-in-water emulsions has been the topic of this screening study. The starches were from quinoa; rice; maize; waxy varieties of rice, maize, and barley; and high-amylose maize. The starches were studied in their native state, heat treated, and modified by octenyl succinic anhydride (OSA). The effect of varying the continuous phase, both with and without salt in a phosphate buffer, was also studied. Quinoa, which had the smallest granule size, had the best capacity to stabilize oil drops, especially when the granules had been hydrophobically modified by heat treatment or by OSA. The average drop diameter (d 32) in these emulsions varied from 270 to 50 μm, where decreasing drop size and less aggregation was promoted by high starch concentration and absence of salt in the system. Of all the starch varieties studied, quinoa had the best overall emulsifying capacity, and OSA modified quinoa starch in particular. Although the size of the drops was relatively large, the drops themselves were in many instances extremely stable. In the cases where the system could stabilize droplets, even when they were so large that they were visible to the naked eye, they remained stable and the measured droplet sizes after 2 years of storage were essentially unchanged from the initial droplet size. This somewhat surprising result has been attributed to the thickness of the adsorbed starch layer providing steric stabilization. The starch particle-stabilized Pickering emulsion systems studied in this work has potential practical application such as being suitable for encapsulation of ingredients in food and pharmaceutical products.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/fsn3.17

Emulsion stabilizing capacity of intact starch granules modified by heat treatment or octenyl succinic anhydride

Intact starch granules are a new source of particles for stabilizing emulsions, so called Pickering emulsions. Small (1-2 μm) and uni-modal starch granules at various concentrations have been used in this study to investigate the stability of the emulsions, the drop size dependence of the starch concentration and the barrier properties of the stabilizing starch layer upon heating. The granules were modified with octenyl succinic anhydride (OSA) to increase the hydrophobicity. The drops in the emulsions prepared in this study were in the 10-100 μm range depending on the starch concentration, and the drop size decreased with an increased amount of added starch granules. During the 8 week storage, the emulsion drops were stable to coalescence and the volume occluded by the emulsion phase was unaffected or even increased. In order to increase the barrier properties at the oil-water interface the emulsions were gently heated, which induced a partial gelatinization of the starch granules. The efficiency of the barrier was characterized by a lipolysis experiment where the activity of lipase was measured. The activity of lipase was decreased with nearly 70% compared to an unheated starch stabilized emulsion, which will be useful in applications where a controlled release of specific substances in the gastro intestinal tract is desirable.

Marilyn Rayner

Papers

Biomass-based particles for the formulation of Pickering type emulsions in food and topical applications

Quinoa starch granules: a candidate for stabilising food‐grade Pickering emulsions

Characterization of starch Pickering emulsions for potential applications in topical formulations

Emulsion stabilizing capacity of intact starch granules modified by heat treatment or octenyl succinic anhydride

Starch particles for food based Pickering emulsions