Characterization of chitin and its complexes extracted from natural raw sources

Abstract

It is known that the main source of chitin and chitosan are shells of shrimp and other sea crustaceans. Alternative row sources of chitin, chitosan and its complexes are the lowest plants - mushrooms and insects. Also industrial wastes, especially from brewing of beer and manufacture of wine and ethanol can be used for extracting chitosan-containing products. The present research is aimed to the extraction of chitin and its complexes from alternative row sources, such as insects (cockroaches Pariplaneta Americana linnaeus and bees Apis mellifera lineaus), mushrooms (Amanita phalloides and Lactarius subdulius), waste banana wine (Kovibar and Urwibutso Inc.) and beer products (Bralirwa Inc., traditional sorghum) characteristic for Rwanda and their characterization using FTIR spectroscopy and elementary analysis. In chitin and its complexes extraction from all used raw sources, conditions for deproteinization were: 8% NaOH at 95 °C for 1 h and demineralization involved treatment with 6.7 % HCl at room temperature. Chitin and its complexes in the extracted samples were identified by FTIR spectroscopy using reference sample of Aspegillus Niger mushrooms. The presence of chitin parts causes the absorption band at 1650, 1552 and 1376 cm-1, which correspond to vibrations of amide groups amide I amide II and amide III, respectively. Using elemental analysis, the ratios of chitin and glucan parts were estimated and the percentage of chitin composition of all species was determined. For most of raw sources a fraction of chitin part was greater than that of glucan part. The chitin content of the samples studied ranged between 0.7-0.8 % of DM (dried mass) for wine (beer) waste products and 38% of dried mass (DM) for cockroaches. © 2016 Author(s).