Comparative evaluation of antibacterial activity of chitosan-treated cellulosic non-woven

Abstract

The treatment of nonwoven with bio-based antimicrobial agents such as chitosan has undergone intense investigation in recent times for a sustainable solution to combat pathogenic microorganisms. Furthermore, analyzing the antibacterial efficacy of treated textiles following standard test protocol with reproducible results is a bottleneck to evaluating the correlation of different molecular weights with varying concentrations of chitosan applied to surface treatment of cellulosic nonwoven. Thus, the purpose of this research study was to explore and compare the antimicrobial efficiency of nonwoven fabrics Escherichia coli strain ATCC 25922, treated with chitosan of low (30 kDa), medium (250 kDa), and high molecular weight (2,100 kDa) at four different concentrations (1, 5, 10, and 15 g/l) by pad-dry and dip-dry methods based on different standardized antimicrobial test methods for textiles. The deposition of chitosan onto the surface of cellulosic nonwoven was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The qualitative analysis of treated nonwoven was performed based on agar diffusion and quantitative antibacterial activity was calculated based on log reduction in bacterial colonies in control and treated samples after 24 hours of incubation time. The experimental results showed that chitosan is a non-leaching agent and cannot diffuse through agar while applied on cellulosic nonwoven fabric. All the tested samples showed excellent antimicrobial activity except pad-dry LMW 1g/l treated sample.