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Author
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Mangoma, Tatenda
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Title
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Isolation and characterisation of chitin and chitosan from black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens (diptera: stratiomydae) from Zimbabwe.
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Abstract
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The black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens, is a dipteran insect that has gained significant attention in recent years due to its potential applications in waste management, animal feed production, and the extraction of valuable biomaterials. One such biomaterial of interest is chitin and its derivative, chitosan, which has a wide range of industrial and biomedical applications. To provide the waste more value, the ability of dead adult black soldier fly biowastes to produce chitin and chitosan was assessed in this study. Before the chitin was extracted, the sample in this case dead adult black soldier flies, pupal exuviae and prepupae were defatted, dried, sieved, and ground. The chitin which was extracted through chemical demineralization followed by deproteinization, obtained the yield in dry weight basis of 7.95± 1.36. The recovered chitin content was found to be 36.52% mg/g, while the chitin content of dead adult black soldier flies was 10.81mg/g. The conversion of extracted chitin to chitosan was carried out using two levels of deacetylation with the same NaOH concentration (12.5 M), the extracted chitin was transformed to chitosan I and II, with varying degrees of browning occurring. Chitosan I and II yielded 3.78 ± 0.16% and 3.79 ± 0.25% respectively. FTIR was used to compare commercial, pharmaceutical, and chitosan I and II. Chitin I and II showed a similar structure to that of commercial chitosan due to the presence of distinctive functional groups like amide III, C-O stretching, C-O-C asymmetric stretching and amide I, which indicated as primary amino group at C2 position, as well as C-H bending and CH3 symmetric deformation, which were not seen in pharmaceutical chitosan. Chitin and chitosan extraction from dead adult black soldier flies and characterization offer encouraging prospects for the manufacture of sustainable biomaterials. The deacetylation of BSF chitin was very successful, as demonstrated by Chitosan I and II achieving high degrees of deacetylation at 80.90% and 80.70%, respectively. This was achieved at lower temperatures (<90°C) and shorter reaction times (6 hours), suggesting that mild conditions can be sufficient to obtain a high degree of deacetylation (~80%), which is very promising. The results of this study can help create economical and environmentally friendly methods for producing chitin and chitosan, which have a wide range of applications in many industries.
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Date
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JUNE 2024
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Publisher
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BUSE
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Keywords
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hitin and chitosan, Black Soldier
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Supervisor
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Dr Mgochecki
