Preparation And Characterization Of Lycopene Microemulsion

Lycopene is a carotenoid hydrocarbon, which has a beneficial role in disease prevention,cancer prevention and cure, and anti-aging. Lycopene is also one of the popular naturalcolored pigments highly accepted by food industry as a food additive and for its healthbenefits. However, the unsaturated acyclic carotenoid with11linear conjugated and twonon-conjugated double bonds make it more soluble in organic solvents than water, and morevulnerable in light, oxygen and so on. All this factors greatly limited its application in thefood industry. The solubilization capacity of the non-continuous phase is evry significant,especially for the lipophilic nutrient in O/W microemulsion solubilization.In the present study, we choose the Lemon oil and Ethyl Butyrate as the oil to preparemicroemulsion based on the solubilization capacity of lycopene and the ability to formmicroemulsion. Compared several kinds of surfactants, we found Cremophor EL30couldform larger monophase area and higher oil content (lower surfactant content) when themicroemulsion infinite dilution with water. Triton X-114incorporation of Cremophor RH40shows prior character than other mixed surfactant, with larger monophase area and betterdilution line (SCS:Oil),6:4. The ratio of surfactant to cosurfactant (ethonal) was examined inorder to find the most favorite ratio which optimizes the area of ME with low surfactant dueto safety concerns.The conductivity/titration curves has been attributed to divide three sub-phases with theME phase. The efficiency of oil phase and surfactant was re-analyzed by comparing the areaof O/W ME, dilution line and oil content. The dramatic viscosity curves revealed therheological properties of ME as a function of aqueous phase weight fraction, and shown goodconsistency with conductivity. All three sub-region ME showed commendable encapsulationefficiency in Cremophor EL30(Triton X-114/Cremophor RH40)/Lemon oil/ethonal/watersystem, above70%for each sample.The solubilization capacity in90wt%water (representing some typical dilutions of O/Wmicroemulsions) is473μg/g. That is14times larger than the solubility in Lemon oil whenadjusted473μg/g in ME to solubility in the current oil fraction. Dilution line7:3shows themost efficiency than other line. Pulse gradient spin echo nuclear magnetic determined relativediffusion coefficient of both oil phase and water phase. The self-diffusion experimentsrevealed that lycopene, which was incorporated along the interfacial film, affected both themicrostructure and the composition in the region in which transformation from W/O tobicontinuous. O/W ME performs both smaller particle size and lower polydispersity index(PDI) as function of water content. Zeta potential shows the more water dilution the bigger ζvalue, indicating the more stable for the O/W ME system. The viscosity of O/W ME load withlycopene didn’t show overt change compared to the empty ME, but the particle size decreased.Microemulsion could protect lycopene when the temperature is getting higher andenvironment more acid. The stability of lycopene was enhanced in these microemulsions(54%), in comparison to the stability of lycopene dissolved in Lemon oil (0) after75days.