Structural Characterization of Chitin and Chitosan Obtained by Biological and Chemical Methods

Chitin production was biologically achieved by lactic acid fermentation (LAF) of shrimp waste (Litopenaeus vannameii) in a packed bed column reactor with maximal percentages of demineralization (DMIN) and deproteinization (DPROT) after 96 h of 92 and 94%, respectively. This procedure also afforded high free astaxanthin recovery with up to 2400 μg per gram of silage. Chitin product was also obtained from the shrimp waste by a chemical method using acid and alkali for comparison. The biologically obtained chitin (BIO-C) showed higher Mw (1200 kDa) and crystallinity index (ICR) (86%) than the chemically extracted chitin (CH-C). A multistep freeze–pump–thaw (FPT) methodology was applied to obtain medium Mw chitosan (400 kDa) with degree of acetylation (DA) ca. 10% from BIO-C, which was higher than that from CH-C. Additionally, ICR values showed the preservation of crystalline chitin structure in BIO-C derivatives at low DA (40–25%). Moreover, the FPT deacetylation of the attained BIO-C produced chitosans with bloc copolymer structure inherited from a coarse chitin crystalline morphology. Therefore, our LAF method combined with FPT proved to be an affective biological method to avoid excessive depolymerization and loss of crystallinity during chitosan production, which offers new perspective applications for this material.