Water-soluble chitosan preparation from marine sources

Water-soluble chitosan (WSC) has been derived from different marine sources such as squid pen, shrimp, mussel, and crab shells. Chitosan was obtained by deacetylation of chitin. Degradation of chitosan by hydrogen peroxide would produce WSC. Demineralization process was optimized by varying incubation time and temperature to minimize the mineral content in chitin. WSC that obtained was characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to calculate the deacetylation degree. Deacetylation degree of WSC was also studied by titrimetric method. The ash content of chitin from marine sources was measured to obtain the optimum demineralization incubation time. The optimum incubation time for demineralization process was 12 hours and stirred at 50 rpm. Recovery and deacetylation degree of WSC were found to be varied and depended on the source of WSC. Each sample of WSC from shrimp shell, mussel shell, squid pen and crab shell has the degree of deacetylation of 64.18%, 35.03%, 58.04% and 53.91% respectively. The presence of amine group was confirmed from FTIR spectra ofsynthesized WSC.