Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Coupled with Chemometrics and Artificial Neural Network Modeling for Prediction of Emulsion Droplet Diameters.

There is increased interest in the food industry for emulsions as delivery systems to preserve the stability of sensitive biocompounds with the aim of improving their bioavailability, solubility, and stability; maintaining their texture; and controlling their release. Emulsification in continuously operated microscale devices enables the production of emulsions of controllable droplet sizes and reduces the amount of emulsifier and time consumption, while NIR, as a nondestructive, noninvasive, fast, and efficient technique, represents an interesting aspect for emulsion investigation. The aim of this work was to predict the average Feret droplet diameter of oil-in-water and oil-in-aqueous mint extract emulsions prepared in a continuously operated microfluidic device with different emulsifiers (PEG 1500, PEG 6000, and PEG 20,000) based on the combination of near-infrared (NIR) spectra with chemometrics (principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares (PLS) regression) and artificial neural network (ANN) modeling.