Evaluation of nonionic surfactant modified montmorillonite as mycotoxins adsorbent for aflatoxin B₁ and zearalenone

This work aims at exploring the potential of nonionic surfactant octylphenol polyoxyethylene ether (OP-10) modified montmorillonites (NMts) as mycotoxins adsorbent. The resulting NMts has different structural configurations, organic carbon contents, surface hydrophobicity and textural properties at different surfactant loadings. The prepared NMts were used for adsorption of polar aflatoxin B₁ (AFB₁) and weak polar zearalenone (ZER) in both single and binary-contaminate systems by simulating conditions of gastrointestinal tract. The adsorption capacities of NMts to AFB₁ and ZER increased up to 2.78 and 8.54 mg/g respectively from 0.51 and 0.00 mg/g of raw montmorillonite (Mt). High adsorption capacities of NMts to AFB₁ and ZER could be reached at low surfactant loadings. There was little decrease from pH of 3.5 to 6.5 but became negligible with increasing the surfactant loadings. In binary-contaminate adsorption system, the adsorption of ZER was obviously affected by the existence of AFB₁, while ZER had little effect on the adsorption process of AFB₁ due to different adsorption mechanism. This study demonstrates that NMts could be a promising adsorbent for simultaneous detoxification of polar and non-polar mycotoxins.