Steam Flush Pressure: A New Modification Method to Extraction chitin from Lingula sp

Abstract

Lingula sp is one of the bivalves, where it is very popular for people as food consumption. However, the high consumption of society is not accompanied by the utilization of residual waste from Lingula sp. In the composition of the structure of the compound, the shell of Lingula sp contains chitin compounds which are very potential to be applied in the field of biotechnology and have an economical value. The aims of this study to isolated chitin from Lingula sp shell used steam flush pressure method. Chitin isolation was carried out with three stages of the process, namely deproteination, decolorization and demineralization at 121 °C, a pressure of 15-20 psi with variations of time 5, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes. Chitin characterization showed that 60 minutes was the optimum treatment time with characteristics of 9.5% water content, 1.01% ash content, total N-content of 6.87% and deacetylation degree 33.19% with a yield of 5.06%. These results showed that the exploration of chitin potential contained in Lingula sp is very potential to be used as a new source. In addition, the steam flush pressure method is a breakthrough to isolation chitin.