本研究將取得容易並具良好生物相容性之海藻酸鈉作為殼材，利用微膠囊包覆技術（Microencapsulation）製備中草藥精油微膠囊，尋求其對於精油的控制釋放能力，並提供後續不同產品用途之應用。試驗採用凝膠法進行微膠囊製備，經由改變微膠囊原料，包括界面活性劑、海藻酸鈉、精油與氯化鈣之濃度等操作變因，探討不同製備條件對精油微膠囊之平均粒徑、包覆率、負載率及釋放模式的影響。結果顯示，所製備的肉豆蔻精油微膠囊之平均粒徑介於1.1至1.4 um之間，平均粒徑與精油負載率隨殼中所含界面活性劑、海藻酸鈉、精油與氯化鈣之濃度增加而遞增，此外精油在微膠囊的釋出速率也會隨氯化鈣，界面活性劑、海藻酸鈉、精油與之濃度增加影響，而延緩釋放速率，進而延長釋放時間。 The research is to microencapsulate plant essential oil to prepare pellet with sodium alginate as a shell material which is an accessible and compatible component. The nutmeg essential oil was used as a model drug. The aim of the study was to investigate the capability of controlled release for the essential oil and further expand applications for various products. The microencapsulation of pellet was prepared by the gelation method. The component of formulation includes surfactant, sodium alginate, essential oil and calcium chloride etc. We investigate the effect of the formulation of pellet and preparation conditions on the properties of pellets such as average particle diameter, embedding ratio, load ratio and the release profile.
The result shows that the average particle diameter of the nutmeg essential oil is between 1.1~1.4 mm. The average diameter and the load ratio of pellet including essential oil are increase with the amount of surfactant, sodium alginate, essential oil and calcium chloride inside the shell of pellet increase. The further study shows that the nutmeg essential oil was microencapsulated with sodium alginate to form pellets could prolong the released time and to control the encapsulating plant essential oil to release
