Abstract
The effect of NaOH/urea solution freeze-thaw pretreatment to the chitosan of purity and the degree of deacetylation from the crab shell was examined. Higher purity chitosan (CS1) was prepared. On this basis, the raw materials after the first demineralization were pretreated with NaOH/urea solution freeze-thaw under different freeze-thaw situations. The produced chitosans (CS1-CS4) were characterized in the ash content, solubility, protein content, degree of deacetylation, viscosity average molecular weight, SEM, FTIR, XRD, antimicrobial activity. The results showed that the freeze-thaw process had advantageous influence on decreasing the ash content and increasing degree of deacetylation and antibacterial activity. Moreover, the antibacterial property of the extracted chitosans seemed to be positively related to their degree of deacetylation. It is concluded that CS4 had the lowest ash content (0.052%), the highest degree of deacetylation (86.02%) and the greatest antibacterial activity. Therefore, we recommend CS4 as agent for industrial and pharmaceutical applications.
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