A membrane contactor for the preparation of solid lipid nanoparticles

Membrane contactors have known recently an increasing interest [3]. They are reported for example for the preparation of emulsions (“membrane emulsification”) and for the preparation of precipitates. The membrane pores behave as parallel capillaries for the introduction of a phase A through the membrane pores in another phase B, which flows tangentially to the membrane surface. There may be no reaction between the two phases, as it is the case for membrane emulsification, or a reaction may occur between the two phases A and B, as it is the case during the preparation of precipitates. The present work describes a new process for the preparation of SLN using a membrane contactor. The advantages of this new process for the preparation of SLN are shown to be its facility of use, the control of the SLN size by an appropriate choice of process parameters and its scaling-up abilities.