Introduction: Interactions between microorganisms and contact surfaces play an important role in various process technologies, where safety is related to hygiene. In food industry, synthetic and aggressive chemicals are used to remove bacteria. These chemicals have negative effects on human health and the environment. Therefore, natural surfactants derived from plant extracts have great potential for biofilm control. Purpose: The purpose of this master’s thesis was to analyze the potential of natural surfactants for the removal of E. coli bacteria from glass surfaces and to assess the possibility for substitution of traditional surfactants with natural ones, based on the comparison of their efficacy. Methods: The study analyzed the efficacy of various cleaning agents, namely extracts of soap nuts, horse-chestnut and quillaia bark. We also analyzed the efficacy of the reference surfactants from the same plants and a traditional surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulphate. For each cleaning agent we determined the surface tension and the emulsification index, so that we could determine their relation to the effectiveness of the cleaning agents. Results: The results show an extremely high efficacy of the traditional surfactant SDS (94%). By increasing the concentration of surfactants, the efficacy of all cleaning agents increased. Among natural extracts the most effective was the quillaia bark extract (66%), followed by soap nuts extract (62%) and horse-chestnut extract (41%). Out of reference surfactants the most effective was saponin from soap nuts (66%), followed by escin from horse-chestnut (52%) and saponin from quillaia bark (45%). We found that more effective cleaning agents have a higher emulsification index and reduce the surface tension more. Natural surfactants have a higher emulsifying activity than traditional synthetic detergents. Discussion and conclusion: Natural surfactants show great potential for E. coli removal. There are many possibilities for research and production of various extracts from plants under different conditions. This field should be explored further in order to find new solutions for control of biofilms and to develop methods for monitoring surface hygiene.
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