The potential development of shrimp shell waste into chitosan originating from Pacitan Coast, Indonesia.

Abstract

Shrimp is one of the biggest comodities at the Pacitan coast area that was taken its meat to be processed into many food products. This could be due to the accumulation of shrimp shell waste abundantly and has no selling value. The conversion of shrimp shell waste into chitosan is the one breakthrough to increase the value of the shrimp shell waste. The objective of this research is to convert shrimp shell waste into chitosan and characterized the quality of chitosan including the deacetylation degree, crystalinity, and its morphology. This research has successfully isolated chitosan that extracted from shrimp shell waste obtained from Sudimoro coast, Pacitan, Indonesia. Chitosan was isolated through three steps of reaction including deproteination, demineralization, and deacetylation. The chitosan produced had the first deacetylation degree at 75% with the second deacetylation degree at 82% and the total of shrinkage from the raw material is at 84%. The synthesized chitosan also showed the decreasing of its crystalinity and had flakes-type morphology that observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM).