Carbon dioxide gas has been widely used in food production. Nevertheless, the conventional ways to utilize CO 2 gas have limitations in terms of safety, convenience, handling and storage. To offer a safe and convenient approach to use CO 2 gas, the production of food-grade CO 2 powder in which CO 2 release can be controlled was investigated. Conventionally, such gas powder has been produced via molecular encapsulation, accomplished by compression of the gas into either a solution of alpha-cyclodextrin (-CD) or crystalline -CD in a solid state. However, shortcomings (low yield or stability of the complex) of these techniques have prevented their actual application.In this project, an innovative method to produce CO 2 --CD complex powder with high yield and stability was investigated using amorphous spray-dried α-CD powder followed by crystallization of the complex. Due to a lack of understanding of amorphous α-CD powder properties and the complexities of conventional methods to quantify CO 2 in solid systems, the project commenced with the characterization of α-CD powders and the development of a simple system to determine the amount of encapsulated CO 2 .The study of the structure of α-CD powders revealed that spray drying of α-CD solution resulted in a completely amorphous powder (T g 83 o C). The differences in molecular structure between crystalline and amorphous α-CDs were illustrated by the analytical results of SEM, X-ray, FTIR, DSC, TGA and 13 C-NMR. The study of moisture sorption showed that an amorphous α-CD powder adsorbed more water than its crystalline counterpart at the same a w but it crystallized as it was equilibrated at higher than 65% RH (>13.70g moisture/100 g of dry solids).A simple system to quantify the CO 2 in the complex through measuring the amount of CO 2 released from the complex into an air-tight chamber headspace by using an infra-red CO 2 probe was designed and tested. The concentrations measured using this new system and conventional acidbase titration were insignificantly different (p > 0.05). This was also validated by the gas chromatography method.A study of solid encapsulation of crystalline (9.84% MC, w.b.) and amorphous (5.58% MC, w.b.) α-CD powders at 0.4-1.6 MPa for 0-96 h showed that amorphous α-CD encapsulated a much larger quantity of CO 2 than the crystalline form at low pressure and short time (p < 0.05). An increase in pressure and prolongation of the time increased encapsulation capacity (EC) of α-CD, especially for the crystalline form. The highest EC of crystalline α-CD was 1.45 mol CO 2 /mol α-CD, which was markedly higher than that of amorphous α-CD (0.98 mol CO 2 /mol α-CD). Solid encapsulation did iii not affect the structure of amorphous α-CD, but slightly altered the structure of crystalline α-CD.Peak representing the encapsulated CO 2 in the complex was clearly observed on the FTIR (2334 cm -1 ) and NMR (125.3 ppm) spectra. However, the complexes were not stable enough for actual application, especially those produced from amorphous α-CD.To impr...