Improving Extraction Processes of Crustacean Chitin Using Solid State Analytical Techniques

Solid state analytical techniques are becoming more widely used for the analysis of a range of organic products which demonstrate very poor solubility in both common organic and polar solvents and as such cannot be accurately characterised using solution based techniques. Primarily used as a secondary technique for qualitative analysis of insoluble intermediates and products in organic synthesis, 13C CP-MAS NMR can be utilised in tandem with a targeted extraction and clean up procedure for accurate quantitative analysis of insoluble bio-molecules of interest. Here solid state 13C CP-MAS NMR is utilised as the primary analytical technique in the characterisation of crustacean sourced chitin whereby Cancer pagurus crab shell chitin and Pandalus borealis shrimp shell chitin are shown to have a degree of acetylation greater than 90%. FTIR spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and DSC provide secondary structural, molecular and thermal analysis of the raw materials and extracted chitin

How To Turn Shellfish Waste Into Bioplastics

The amount of material left over from crab and shrimp production in Europe every year is the same mass as 60 fully laden container ships. This 1.5 megatonnes of material is all of the bits that we do not consume, mainly consisting of shells, tails and unused meat. At present, most of this material ends up going to landfill or incinerators or is dumped back into our seas