Generation of homo- and heterogeneous microcapsules and their application

Microencapsulation is defined as a process during which the whole envelopment with (bio)catalysts, substrates etc. is included into hydrogel and/or surrounded by a porous polymeric membrane. However, the production of homogeneous, narrow size, distributed capsules is quite troublesome. The main problem is the way of obtaining a large number of capsules with a precisely predefined size. It is possible due to a device called an encapsulator. This equipment allows to produce homogeneous beads and core-shell systems with a predefined size in the range from 400 µm to 1600 µm, which is possible because of special nozzles with different diameters. There are a lot of microcapsule applications. In this paper, we would like to present the construction, principles of operation and selected applications of microencapsulation devices using the example of the BÜCHI–B390 encapsulator.