Chitin food industry

Chitosan is produced from the deacetylation of chitin. Chitosan is employed in the food industry. It is a hemostatic from which blood anticoagulants and antithrombogenic have been formed. It is often sold as a body fat-reducing agent or to be taken along with food to encapsulate fat particles. 

Microcrystalline chitin has been used as a thickening/gelling agent in the binding, stabilizing, and texturing of food [58]. Chitin is widely used to immobilize enzymes and whole cells enzyme immobilization has applications in the food industry, such as clarification of fruit juices and... 

Chitin and chitosan(s) (CS) are biopolymers that have received considerable attention due to their numerous applications in agriculture, food, textile, the paper industry, the food industry and biomedicine and so on. 

Chitin, the precursor of chitosan, is a nitrogen containing polysaccharide and is second most abundant biopolymer after cellulose. It is widely distributed in the shells of crustaceans such as crabs, shrimps, lobsters, prawns, squilla, etc., as well as in the exoskeleton of marine zoo-plankton, including coral, jellyfish, and squid pens. About 20-40% chitin is present the exoskeleton of these animals. It is also present in smaller quantities in insects such as butter flies ladybugs, and the cell walls of yeast, mushrooms, and other fungi [Fig. 19.4]. However, since the crustacean shells [crabs, shrimps, lobsters, etc.] are waste products of food industry, these are commercially employed for the production of chitin and chitosan [1, 4, 18], It is believed that at least 10 gigaton of chitin is synthesized and degraded and it is also estimated that over 150,000 tons of chitin is available for commercial use annually. 

Chitin was used also to immobilize enzymes and whole cells. Enzyme immobilization was used for applications in food industries such as clarification of fruit juices and processing of milk with a- and p-amylases and invertase fixed on chitin [89]. Chitin is also used for the treatment of environmental pollutants [90,91], or in biosensors [92,93]. 

Chitin, Chitosan, and Their Oligosaccharides in Food Industry... 

The second most abundant biopolymer chitin and its deacetylated form chitosan have a wide range of applications, including in the food industry. Insolubility at neutral pH is a major factor which limits the food applications of these two biopolymers and has attracted the attention of scientists toward the depolymerized oligosaccharide form of chitosan, which is soluble at neutral pH. Therefore, COS can be applied in the many fields where the insolubility of chitin or chitosan is becoming a limiting factor, especially in the food industry. 

Semi-permeable membranes, such as those used in ultrafiltration, have many potential applications in the food industry. Ishikawa and Nara (1992) pointed out, however that the main problem with these systems was the permeation of the solute used in osmosis into the foodstuff. This could be controlled by the use of a semi-permeable membrane placed in intimate contact with the food, that is, with no free space between the membrane and the food. They investigated the use of a membrane made from a chitosan gel. Chitosan is prepared from chitin, a glycan separated commercially from the shells of crustaceans. Chitosan is both semi-permeable and edible. They postulated that food could, therefore, be coated with a chitosan membrane, thereby eliminating any free space. As yet, chitosan is not permitted as an additive in foods, but this technique may find wide applications in the food industry if chitosan were to be accepted as a processing aid for foodstuffs. 

Crab, shrimp, and lobster shells, waste products of the sea food industry, are the best sources of the polysaccharide. Calcium carbonate is first removed by hydrochloric acid and then protein and other organic impurities by extraction with sodium or potassium hydroxide solutions. Complete acid hydrolysis of chitin, although requiring drastic conditions, yields almost theoretical amounts of D-glucosamine and acetic acid (Chapter VIII), whereas controlled acid or enzyme hydrolysis produces V-acetyl-D-glucosa-mine. Acetolysis of chitin or acetylation of the partial acid hydrolysis products gives among other products chitobiose octaacetate which has been... 

Chitin is the 2nd major biomaterial produced in the world. As a residue of food industry and fishery, it is a resource which has not been fully utilized. Lignin PU filled with chitin powder was prepared and its physical properties were investigated. 

Chitin (poly-A-acetyl-D-glucosamine, 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-1,4-P-D-glucan) is one of the three most abundant polysaccharides (along with starch and cellulose) and is extracted from shells of crustaceans and cell walls of fungi. Chitosan is produced by deacetylation of chitin and can be spun into fibres, cast into films, or precipitated in a variety of micro-morphologies. Major applications are in biomaterials, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, metal ion sequestration, agriculture and the food industry. ... 

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