Parameter effect on Chitosan beads prepared via water-in-oil emulsion crosslinking methods

Chitosan has wide range of application due to its biocompatibility, biodegradability, non-toxicity and multi-purpose chemical and physical properties. Chitosan bead can be prepared in varies sized as macro, micro, and nano. The parameter controlled in production of chitosan beads was feeding rate, needle size, surfactant concentration and polymer concentration. The parameters were affecting the day, of chitosan beads can be controlled. Chitosan beads were produced by water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion crosslinking technique. The chitosan solution was added dropwise into oil phase containing 40% (v/v) sunflower oil and 60% (v/v) n-hexane with the presence of tween 80. Then, the beads were crosslinked to harden the surface with crosslinking agent glutaraldehyde. Different size chitosan beads are applied in different application such as food, pharmaceutical, environmental protection and recently in gene therapy. Macro size chitosan beads were mostly used in food and drug release in acidic environment. In this study, chitosan beads encapsulated 1 wt% vitamin D3 as dietary supplement and 1 wt% lipstick to mimic oil based drugs. The size of chitosan beads affects the loading capacity of beads, resulted in increasing loading capacity when the size of chitosan beads increases. Reverse phase on this method can encapsulated oil and water based drug by doing some modification at prepared oil and water phase before obtained the beads. Oil phase in this method was substitute with coagulation liquid contain of ethanol and sodium hydroxide in order to encapsulated water based drug.