Adsorption Studies of Salmonella Enteritidis and Escherichia coli on Chitosan-Coated Magnetic Nanoparticles

One of the challenges of microbiological testing is the complex and lengthy sample preparation, causing delays in getting the final result. Immunomagnetic separation is one of the sample preparation techniques recently used to overcome this complexity. However, it is expensive, fragile, and requires cold storage. This study aimed to use chitosan-coated magnetic nanoparticles (cMNP) to capture bacterial cells from a simulated matrix and understand the interaction between the bacteria and the cMNP using batch adsorption studies. To illustrate the concept, <i>Salmonella</i> Enteritidis and <i>Escherichia coli</i> were used. Results showed that the adsorption of <i>Salmonella</i> Enteritidis and <i>E. coli</i> fitted the pseudo-second-order kinetic model (R² = 0.939 and 0.968, respectively) and the Freundlich isotherm model (R² = 0.999 and 0.970, respectively). The increased ionic strength enhanced bacterial adsorption, and the highest capture efficiency was observed at pH 4 (32.8% and 98.1% for <i>Salmonella</i> Enteritidis and <i>E. coli</i>, respectively). These results show that chemisorption plays a significant role in bacterial adsorption to cMNP. Furthermore, increasing ionic strength and acidic pH (pH 4) significantly affects the adsorption of <i>Salmonella</i> Enteritidis and <i>E. coli</i> on cMNP, making them crucial for enhancing the performance of cMNP-based sample preparation methods.