Effect of Hemicellulose as a Coating Material on Water Sorption Thermodynamics of the Microencapsulated Fish Oil and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Modeling of Isotherms

Abstract

In this study, effect of hemicellulose as a coating material on sorption behavior of the microencapsulated fish oil is presented. For this purpose, water sorption isotherms of the fish oil microcapsules prepared using gum arabic (GA) and gum arabic-hemicellulose (GA-HC) were determined at 10, 25, and 35 °C using the gravimetric technique. The equilibrium moisture content (EMC) data were fitted to several empirical mathematical models, namely Oswin, BET, GAB, and Freundlich equations and the novel artificial neural network (ANN) model. The GA-HC microcapsules had higher EMC values than GA, due to the sugar content of hemicellulose. The EMC of the samples were more accurately predicted by the ANN model than by the empirical models at the entire range of a<inf>w</inf>. Heat of sorption of fish oil microcapsules was then predicted using the data obtained from the ANN model and fitted to the power model (R2 = 0.985–0.978). A linear relation existed between the differential enthalpy and the differential entropy for microcapsules, thus satisfying the enthalpy-entropy compensation theory. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.