Anais do Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciências de Alimentos
Proceedings of 14 SLACA - Latin American Symposium on Food Science

Anthocyanins are compounds of interest in the microencapsulation process by spray chilling, being used for food enrichment or coloring. Ultrasound-assisted homogenization can support the stability process and bioavailability of bioactive compounds in microencapsulation. Thus, this work evaluates the influence of assisted ultrasound on the total content and retention of anthocyanins obtained by spray chilling. The microparticles were produced from 50% of emulsion containing hibiscus extract and 50% of encapsulating lipid materials, fully hydrogenated palm fat and refined palm oil. In addition, 4% of PGPR emulsifiers were used in relation to the encapsulants. Emulsions were treated by ultrasound-assisted at 4 levels of energy densities (0 [control], 0.288, 0.216 and 0.144 kJ.cm-3) and submitted to a spray chiller for the production of microparticles. To determine the total anthocyanins by spectrophotometry, the anthocyanins were extracted in acidified ethanol, submitted to an ultrasonic bath and centrifuged. For comparison purposes, the anthocyanins of each treatment and the pure hibiscus extract were quantified. The total content and retention of anthocyanins were statistically evaluated by Duncan's test with α=0.05. Based on the results, the increase in energy density in assisted ultrasound favored the degradation of anthocyanins, which can be explained by the overheating of the emulsion and also by the encapsulation efficiency, supporting the controlled release of anthocyanins. The encapsulations pretreated in assisted ultrasound were efficient, showing anthocyanin retention above 91% for all treatments. The 0.144 kJ.cm-3 treatment, despite that does not show significant differences with the 0 kJ.cm-3 treatment (control), showed a better anthocyanin content and retention, degrading them slightly due to the generation of cavitations by homogenization in assisted ultrasound , which prevents exposure and degradation of anthocyanins in microparticles. Future studies can be carried out in order to evaluate the effects of ultrasound-assisted homogenization on the stability of anthocyanin during storage.