An optimized chitosan/alginate-based microencapsulation of lime peel essential oil and its application as an antibacterial textile.

A functional textile immobilized by microcapsules of the lime peel essential oils of (LPEO) was prepared and characterized. A varied amount of Chitosan/Alginate (CH/AG) ratios, followed by a mass of LPEO and concentration of sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) crosslinker, was optimized sequentially to coacervate LPEO using a Tween 80 emulsifier. An antibacterial assay against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria was further evaluated for the embedded microcapsules. The LPEO (0.2 g) was effectively coacervated by CH/AG (5:3) crosslinked by 2% of STTP to give a yield, oil content (OC), and encapsulation efficiency (EE) of 53.45 ± 2.16%, 65.08 ± 2.60% and 85.04 ± 0.70% respectively. A rough spherical shape of LPEO microcapsules was homogeneously observed with an average particle size of 0.757 mm. An Avrami's kinetic model revealed the release mechanism of the core following zero-order kinetics ( = 1.11 ± 0.13 × 10 s, Ea = 70.21 kJ/mol). The LPEO microcapsules demonstrated good thermal stability up to 122 °C and maintained 38% OC at ambient temperature for four weeks. A 70.34 ± 4.16% of the LPEO microcapsules were successfully overlaid onto the gauze with citric acid binder and sodium phosphate catalyst. Overall, the immobilized microcapsules exhibited strong inhibition against and moderate against and .