Valorization of Crab Shell Waste into Bacterial Enzyme Production and Chitin Characterization
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Chitin, a valuable biopolymer with significant economic and industrial applications, is primarily found in aquatic crustaceans, particularly in crab shells, which serve as the main commercial sources. The study involves deproteinization and demineralization to remove proteins and minerals and extract 15.45% chitin from crab shell waste. Chitin was characterized by determining its physicochemical properties using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and Scanning electron microscope. The purified chitins from crab shell waste were comparable to those of commercially purchased chitin. Purified chitin further implicates in deacetylation process to convert the extracted chitin into chitosan. Chitosaninfused media were used to isolate 31 chitinolytic bacteria, with the highest enzyme activity at 82.45U/ml on 7X5ZA isolates. The culture filtrate of selected bacteria degrades 2% of crab shell powder resulting in 10.5% weight loss in the raw crab shell powder (substrate) and explores the production of N-acetyl glucosamine (97.53U/ml), post reaction with enzyme at incubation period of 48hrs at 47°C. An alternative solution for the chemical process to extract chitin from the crab shell is an enzymatic process. Crab shell powder is treated with culture filtrate to obtain chitin which has similar chemical composition, surface morphology and elemental content compared with both commercially purchased chitin and chemically digested chitin of crab shell. This study suggests that crab shell waste can be used for effective chitin extraction and discovery of chitinaseproducing bacteria to conserve a safe environment.
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4415765152