Flavoring properties that affect the retention of volatile components during encapsulation process

Area of Science:

• Food Science and Technology
• Chemical Engineering
• Materials Science

Background:

• Flavorings are crucial in the food and beverage sectors, with spray drying being a cost-effective encapsulation method.
• Current methods often use a single slurry for diverse flavor types, potentially reducing retention.
• Flavor characteristics, such as hydrophobicity, can impact emulsion stability and encapsulation outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of flavoring hydrophobicity on emulsion stability and encapsulation efficiency using spray drying.
• To compare the performance of orange (more hydrophobic) and passion fruit (less hydrophobic) flavorings in a Modified Starch and Maltodextrin 20DE matrix.
• To determine the optimal conditions for achieving high retention of flavorings via spray drying.

Main Methods:

• Formulation of a slurry with Modified Starch and Maltodextrin 20DE, loaded with 35% orange or passion fruit flavoring.
• Spray drying of both flavorings under identical process conditions.
• Analysis of emulsion stability using droplet size distribution and Turbiscan Stability Index (TSI), and evaluation of encapsulation efficiency.

Main Results:

• Orange flavoring, being more hydrophobic, resulted in significantly better emulsion stability (TSI _orange ≪ TSI _{passion fruit}) and smaller initial droplet size.
• Despite smaller initial droplet size, the hydrophobic flavoring yielded larger final particle sizes after spray drying.
• The most hydrophobic flavoring achieved the highest encapsulation efficiency, exceeding 92%.

Conclusions:

• Flavoring hydrophobicity is a critical factor influencing emulsion stability and encapsulation efficiency in spray drying.
• Optimizing in-feed emulsion characteristics, particularly droplet size influenced by hydrophobicity, is key to maximizing flavor retention.
• The study demonstrates that utilizing more hydrophobic flavorings can lead to superior encapsulation results (>92%) for stable food and beverage products.