Production of water-soluble quercetin formulations by antisolvent precipitation and supercritical drying

• The encapsulation of quercetin in water-soluble carriers was studied.
• Lecithin is a more promising carrier for quercetin than Pluronic L-64 or OSA-starch.
• Encapsulation efficiencies up to 90% were obtained using lecithin as carrier.
• Properties of the final product were preserved after supercritical CO2 spray-drying.

Quercetin is one of the most prominent dietary antioxidants. The application of quercetin in food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries due to its properties, requires an adequate formulation in order to provide protection against degradation, to increase the solubility in aqueous systems and to improve the bioavailability. This work presents a study of the encapsulation of quercetin in water-soluble carriers by antisolvent precipitation using three different techniques: shear mixing, continuous flow turbulent mixing at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature and turbulent mixing at high pressure and high temperature. A preliminary study of quercetin formulation by shear mixing showed that modified OSA-starch and Pluronic L-64 were not good carrier materials due to the low encapsulation efficiencies and high particle sizes obtained. However, using lecithin as carrier material, it was possible to obtain stable and homogeneous aqueous dispersions of quercetin particles with encapsulation efficiencies up to 90%. By supercritical drying, spherical particles with particle sizes in the range of 10 μm were obtained that could be used to reconstitute the aqueous suspension, maintaining the encapsulation efficiency of quercetin.

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