Encapsulation of Extracted Oil from Mentha piperita in Alginate Beads

Kriti Shrestha, Manish Kunwar, Alina Kunwar, Prayan Pokharel

Abstract


Encapsulating essential oils derived from traditional medicinal flora within alginate beads represents an up-and-coming technique for enhancing their stability, bioavailability, and controlled release properties. In this study, we employed a Clevenger apparatus to extract the essential oil from Mentha piperita. The hydrodistillation process of M. piperita yielded an essential oil extraction of 0.27 ± 0.05%. The ionic gelation methodology facilitates the cross-linking of alginate with Calcium chloride, forming a gel-like matrix that effectively encapsulates essential oil droplets within stable, gelled beads. The essential oil-loaded beads were quantified spectrophotometrically at a wavelength of 340 nm (λmax). Furthermore, we evaluated and characterized the beads for size, weight analysis, sphericity, swelling behavior, dissolution kinetics, pH stability, drying rate, and accelerated stability studies. The size of alginate beads exhibited a significant increase concomitant with an elevation in sodium alginate concentration. The release profile of the oil content demonstrated a more sustained and regulated release within a phosphate buffer at pH 6.8 as opposed to that observed in 0.1N HCl.

Keywords


Mentha piperita; Encapsulation; Alginate beads; Essential Oil

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14421/biomedich.2025.141.337-343

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Copyright (c) 2025 Kriti Shrestha, Manish Kunwar, Alina Kunwar, Prayan Pokharel



Biology, Medicine, & Natural Product Chemistry
ISSN 2089-6514 (paper) - ISSN 2540-9328 (online)
Published by Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University & Society for Indonesian Biodiversity.

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This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC