Electrospraying: a Novel Technique for Efficient Coating of Foods

There is a continuous need for thin edible coatings with excellent barrier properties, which has resulted in the quest for new coating methods. Electrospraying is a novel coating technique that is known to yield fine droplets of size down to 20 μm and even smaller ones, giving the potential of ultra-thin and uniform coatings. In this review, various process parameters are discussed that influence the coating quality and efficiency for electrospraying. The droplet size during the spraying process is a function of operational parameters and liquid properties. Successful deposition of thin films has been reported for model (conductive and non-conductive) surfaces (aluminium, Parafilm and various membranes) as well as food surfaces (apple and candies). This review article is an attempt to summarize valuable information about process optimization for food applications. The existing scaling relations are presented here relating various process and product-related parameters.