We have employed extended DLVO colloid theory to understand and explain unfavorable adhesive biomass-adsorbent interactions affecting the performance expanded bed adsorption (EBA) chromatography. These involve thermodynamic as well as electrostatic surface characterizations, adapted and streamlined towards biomass and adsorbent, which significantly improves over previous methods and avoids mechano-chemical alteration of the adsorbent. For the first time, the capillary rise method was used to determine the surface energy components of the chromatographic adsorbents. Predicted biomass-adsorbent interactions between several chromatographic adsorbents (HIC, IEX, and affinity) and different cell types (Escherichia coli and CHO) in varying solution conditions were shown to correlate well with biomass deposition experiments. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.