Investigation of ultrasonic bath, surfactant to oil ratio and quince seed mucilage concentration effect on spontaneous nanoemulsion properties

The aim of this study was to investigate the properties of oil in water nanoemulsion stabilized with whey protein isolate (1% w/v) and quince seed mucilage (0.1 and 0.5% w/v) by low energy method of spontaneous emulsification and high energy method of ultrasound homogenizer. Since the main problem in utilization of spontaneous emulsification method is the use of high amounts of synthetic surfactants, one of the objectives of this study was to investigate the effect of different surfactant to oil ratios (SOR= 1:1, 2:1 and 3:2) and ultrasonic bath supplementation on spontaneous nanoemulsion properties. Nanoemulsion characteristics such as particle size, zeta potential, viscosity and stability of nanoemulsion were studied. In this study, nanoemulsions with the particle size less than 200 nm were well prepared. Increasing the mucilage concentration and the surfactant to oil ratio resulted in a significant reduction in particle size, a slight increase in zeta potential (increase in negativity), increased viscosity, decreased creaming index and increased emulsions stability index. The nanoemulsions from the high energy method and the nanoemulsions treated with ultrasonic bath have the lowest particle size, creaming index, and highest emulsions stability index. The results of this study showed that by a simple treatment with an ultrasonic bath, it was possible to create spontaneous nanoemulsions with very small particle size (with nm dimensions) without using high concentrations of synthetic surfactants.