Evaluation of Protein Microencapsulation Efficiency in Alginate/Hydroxyethyl Cellulose Polymer Composite

Abstract

Considering how much protein is loaded into the process, the crosslinking solution concentration and the weight percentage of the alginate/hydroxyethyl cellulose coating material, this study presented the details of optimization of the microencapsulation process. Optimization was done with an objective of maximizing the encapsulation efficiency of the microparticle fabricated using external ionotropic gelation method. Results showed that the process is capable of achieving around 75% encapsulation efficiency when protein loading is around 15 wt%, alginate/hydroxyethyl cellulos is about 2 wt% and the CaCl2 solution should be 3 wt%. This was done using Box-Behnken methodology wherein the predicted model was found to have good predictive capability. Analysis also showed that the process is affected by how much protein drug is loaded into the system and the interactions between crosslinking solution concentration with bovine serum albumin (BSA) loading as well as the strong relationship between alginate/hydroxyethyl cellulos concentration with itself.