Micronization by supercritical fluid technologies for green encapsulation and stabilization of food bioactives: A comprehensive review of mechanisms and applications

Micronization is an evolving technique used to reduce the particle size and improve the nutritional quality, functionality, and encapsulation efficiency (EE) of food derived bioactives. Micronization by supercritical fluid technology (SCF) is an emerging green process that is an effective method for stabilizing bioactive compounds with controlled sizes and shapes, with merits such as continuous processing over conventional methods. This review briefly outlines the properties of SCFs and comprises all the SCFs along with their underlying working, mechanism, components, process, advantages and limitations. Additionally, it provides a detailed overview of SCF technology applications, which has been extensively applied on fruits and vegetables derived bioactives along with herbs, species, meat, fish, dairy, cereal, and legumes derived bioactives. This study further covers the factors influencing micronized particle size and EE, such as temperature, pressure, and mass ratio. SCF technologies have been successfully applied to different food bioactives because of their high diffusivity, rapid mass transfer, and effective solubilization. These technologies have proven to be valuable in particle formation processes where different processing conditions, including pressure and temperature, significantly influence the resulting particle characteristics. SCF applications have led to significant improvements, including a 100 % increase in EE and particle size reduction to less than 10 μm. Future research should focus on sectors such as dairy, meat and cereals, which are less explored for enhancing the stability of compounds along with their encapsulation.