Development of Microencapsulation Delivery System for Long-Term Preservation of Probiotics as Biotherapeutics Agent

Table 13

Advantages and disadvantages of alginate system.

Advantages

Disadvantages

(i) The advantages are easy formation of gel matrices around bacterial cells, being nontoxic and cheap; mild process conditions are needed for their performance, easily prepared and performed and properly resolved in the intestine and release entrapped cell [85, 146, 201]; (ii) Alginate gel matrix forms bacterial cell beads with a diameter of 1–3 µm, and the pore size does not exceed 7 NM [202]

(i) Disadvantages are susceptible to acidic environments, crackling and loss of mechanical stability in lactic acid [203, 204], difficulties in industrial scale applications due to their high expenses, and a weak ability of scaling up as well as the formation of crackled and porous bead surfaces, which leads to fast diffusion of moisture and fluids through capsules which reduces their barrier properties against unfavorable environment factor [146]; (ii) This can be overcome by blending of alginate with another polymer like starch, coating other compound on its capsules [29, 30, 32, 181]