Martins, Isabel M.Rodrigues, Sofia NogueiraBarreiro, M.F.Rodrigues, Alírio2012-12-032012-12-032012Martins, I.M.; Rodrigues, S.N.; Barreiro, M.F.; Rodrigues, A.E. (2012). Release studies of thymol and p-cymene from polylactide microcapsules. INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RESEARCH. 51:35, p.11565-11571http://hdl.handle.net/10198/7741The objective of this work is to access the release behavior of thymol and p-cymene used as model core materials with PLA microcapsules. The microcapsules were obtained by a coacervation process developed in a previous work and present a spherical shape with mean particle size of 25 and 37 mu m for thymol and p-cymene, respectively. The results have shown that the release of thymol and p-cymene is faster in the first hour keeping almost constant in the subsequent days. The diffusion coefficient in the first hour of release was 1.99 X 10(-16) m(2)/s for thymol and 4.34 X 10(-16) m(2)/s for p-cymene. However, the diffusion was slower if considering a period of 5 days being the diffusion coefficients of 3.34 X 10(-19) m(2)/s for thymol and 3.45 X 10(-18) m(2)/s for cymene.engEssential oilsMicrospheresPharmacokineticsPolymersjournal article10.1021/ie301406f