Scientists develop sustainable way to extract chitin from prawn shells

Chitin serves all kinds of makes use of within the meals industry, resembling meals thickeners and stabilisers, and as anti-microbial meals packaging.

The NTU technique is extra sustainable than present approaches that chemically extract chitin from marine waste, which is dear, consumes giant quantities of power and results in chemical by-products that could be discharged in industrial wastewater.

Six to eight million tons of crustacean waste are generated yearly world wide, with 45 to 60 per cent of shrimp shells discarded as processing by-products.

Professor William Chen, Director of the Meals Science and Expertise programme at NTU, who led the analysis, stated, “The massive quantity of shrimp waste has sparked industrial curiosity as it’s an considerable supply of chitin. Nevertheless, there’s a drawback within the extraction technique, which is each unsustainable and dangerous to the setting.

“Our new technique takes crustacean waste and discarded fruit waste and makes use of pure fermentation processes to extract chitin. This isn’t solely cost-effective, but additionally environmentally-friendly and sustainable, and helps to scale back total waste,” stated Prof Chen.

The crew’s findings had been printed in peer-reviewed journal AMB Specific in January 2020.

The NTU crew examined ten sources of frequent fruit waste resembling white and pink grape pomace, mango and apple peels, and pineapple cores, in numerous fermentation experiments. They discovered that fruit waste contained sufficient sugar content material to energy the fermentation course of that breaks prawn shells down into chitin.

They used ‘X-ray diffraction’ approach to find out the atomic and molecular construction of the chitin created utilizing the brand new technique and its degree of purity was measured utilizing a ‘crystallinity index’. The extracted crude chitin samples from prawn shells fermented utilizing fruit waste gave a crystallinity index of 98.16 per cent, which in comparison with business chitin samples with an index of 87.56 per cent. The fermentation course of utilizing the sugar content material from the fruit waste produced greater high quality chitin than the business one.

Prof Chen stated, “Our analysis has led to not solely greater high quality chitin however a extra sustainable and environmentally-friendly course of too. Whereas the varied sorts of fruit waste produced good outcomes, the sugar from the pomace of pink grapes had the most effective efficiency. That is additionally an economical technique for industry-scale operations, which may very well be of potential curiosity to wineries trying to cut back and upcycle their waste.”

“This analysis additionally echoes NTU’s translational analysis focus, which goals to develop sustainable improvements that profit society and industry and create a greener future.”

Mr Bathroom Yuen Meng, Managing Director of Built-in Aqua Singapore Pte. Ltd., who was not concerned within the research, stated, “The newest improvements developed by Prof William Chen from the Meals Science and Expertise programme at NTU, is a wonderful instance of how the experience from an institute of upper studying might be utilized to enhance operational effectivity of the meals industry whereas decreasing meals processing waste. By a easy fermentation course of, the high-value chitin and chitosan recovered from the prawn shells are environment-friendly, and the merchandise might be re-connected again to the meals industry.”

By leaving chitin to endure additional phases of fermentation the NTU analysis crew additionally discovered they might ferment it additional into chitosan, which can be utilized as a development enhancer in plant fertilisers, or as a managed drug supply system in pharmaceutical therapies.

The NTU crew is now exploring methods to make use of chitosan to boost earlier analysis improvements resembling meals packaging created utilizing soybean residue or Okara. This might doubtlessly result in the event of a extra sturdy cellulose movie with anti-microbial and anti-bacterial properties.

Prof Chen can also be working with a number of firms to spur the adoption of greener industrial strategies in producing chitin and chitosan.