The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has been awarded R25.9-million by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) to establish South Africa’s first pilot-scale supercritical carbon dioxide (CO₂) encapsulation facility (SCEF), which is set to be operational in 2022. 

The facility will address the innovation chasm that exists in the industrialisation of supercritical CO₂-based encapsulation technologies; enable local small, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs) and firms to conduct field trials; and assist in investigating the market uptake of their technologies. 

The unique advantage of the supercritical CO₂-based encapsulation technology is that it encapsulates sensitive actives used in animal and human health such as probiotics, proteins and vitamins in an inert environment without exposure to moisture, oxygen and solvents, while operating at low temperatures, thereby preserving the activity of the materials. This is key in providing a balanced nutrition for human health and livestock, improving feed digestibility and reducing overall feed requirements, leading to production cost savings.

“Currently, the encapsulation methods that are being used commercially are spray drying or extrusion. However, these processes expose sensitive actives to high temperatures, shear, organic solvents, moisture and oxygen. All these can compromise their stability.

"Therefore, as an alternative, our team has developed novel encapsulation technologies using the supercritical CO₂ process. This is a more efficient process to encapsulate sensitive actives," says CSIR Centre for Nanostructures and Advanced Materials principal researcher Dr Philip Labuschagne.

Using this process, the CSIR recently developed and licensed this technology to a local SMME for commercialisation of a range of probiotic-containing health supplements. However, a major barrier for full-scale commercialisation is that there are no pilot-scale supercritical CO₂ encapsulation facilities in South Africa to produce products at scale.

In response to this challenge, the CSIR will now establish a pilot-scale SCEF that will have a production capacity of up to 100 kg of product per hour, producing products for a range of applications, which includes personal care to nutraceuticals.

In addition, as the end-products will be for use in food (nutraceuticals for human and animal use) and personal care products, the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point safety system will be implemented across the facility.