Supercritical antisolvent precipitation of PHBV microparticles

• Author(s): Costa, M. S. ; Duarte, Ana Rita C. ; Cardoso, M. M. ; Duarte, Catarina M. M.
• Date: 2007
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/13424
• Origin: RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho
• Subject(s): Supercritical fluids; Micronization; SAS; Natural polymers; PHBV; Drug delivery
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

The micronization of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) from organic solutions using supercritical antisolvent (SAS) technique has been successfully achieved. SASexperiments were carried out at different operational conditions and microspheres with mean diameters ranging from 3 to 9 mwere obtained. The effect of CO2 and liquid flow, temperature and pressure on particle size and particle size distribution was evaluated. The microspheres were precipitated from a dichloromethane (DCM) solution. The best process conditions for this mixture were, according to our study, 40 ◦C, 100 bar, 1mLmin−1 liquid flow and 10 L min−1 carbon dioxide flow. Experiments with polymers containing different HV percentages were carried out. The powders obtained became more spherical as the HV content decreased.