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Characteristics of grape pomace extract and PLGA particles produced by SAS process

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Grape pomace presents a high content of phenolic compounds, which are associated with health benefits. The encapsulation of natural extracts using polymers is important in order to facilitate the product handling and improves its stability. The objective of this work was to apply the Supercritical Anti-Solvent (SAS) process to encapsulate grape pomace extract in poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA). The grape pomace extract was obtained by soxhlet with ethanol, and the encapsulation process applied ethyl acetate as primary solvent and 99.9% pure CO2 as anti-solvent. Briefly, the process initiates by the adjustment of operational parameters, followed by the introduction of the precipitation solution simultaneously with the supercritical CO2. The process was performed using CO2 flow rate of 1kg/h and at different conditions of pressure (80-140bar) and temperature (35-45oC). The scanning electronic microscopy of the particles revealed spherical shape particles with diameters next to 10μm.