Effect Of Degrees Of Deacetylation On The Antimicrobial Activities Of Chitosan

Chitosan a natural polysaccharide polymer derived from chitin and was investigated for the effect of degree of deacetylation and its antimicrobial activity. The chitin was subjected to modification using 30 40 and 50 NaOH to obtain chitosan of various degree of Deacetylation and were subjected to physiochemical analysis such as solubility moisture content ash content viscosity and degree of deacetylation Ultra-violet visible spectroscopy UV-Visible Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy Analysis FT-IR spectroscopy Differential Scanning Calorimetry DSC and the antimicrobial study zone of inhibition minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bacteriocidal fungicidal concentration The degree of deacetylation was 80 when 50wv NaOH was used and 67 30 wv NaOH which shows that as the concentration of NaOH increases the more acetyl groups are been removed.