Abstract
The waste generated from shrimp processing contains valuable materials such as protein, carotenoids, and chitin. The present study describes a process at pilot plant scale to recover chitin from the cephalothorax of Penaeus vannamei using mild conditions. The application of a sequential enzymatic–acid–alkaline treatment yields 30% chitin of comparable purity to commercial sources. Effluents from the process are rich in protein and astaxanthin, and represent inputs for further by-product recovery. As a last step, chitin is deacetylated to produce chitosan; the optimal conditions are established by applying a response surface methodology (RSM). Under these conditions, deacetylation reaches 92% as determined by Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H-NMR), and the molecular weight (Mw) of chitosan is estimated at 82 KDa by gel permeation chromatography (GPC). Chitin and chitosan microstructures are characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).
Highlights
Prawns and shrimp are the second fish product marketed at world level, and constitute 8% of the total value of internationally traded fish products
Is an improved modification of the alkaline–enzymatic methods reported by other authors [28,30,31,32]. These improvements are based on the reduction of the concentrations of alkaline (1 M NaOH) and acid reagents (0.4 M HCl), time (6 h for the whole process), and processing temperature, when compared to the more extreme conditions described in the cited works
The chitin obtained presents similar purity levels in terms of the ash content, the degree of acetylation, and the infrared fingerprint, which demonstrates that milder conditions are sufficient to obtain high quality chitin (Table 1)
Summary
Prawns and shrimp are the second fish product marketed at world level, and constitute 8% of the total value of internationally traded fish products. Penaeus vannamei is the top cultured species. Because of its great commercial value, the food industry processes a significant amount of these crustaceans, in many cases involving the removal of the exoskeleton of the tail and the cephalothorax. About 40–45% of the whole animal is considered by-products. This low yield combined with the commercial importance of this species results in high amounts of waste generated by its industrial processing. Alternatives for the treatment of these by-products are necessary, ideally scaled at pilot plant level to assess their viability
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