Spectroscopical characterization of chitin extracted from different BSF sources

Biopolymers are finding more and more fields of use, chitin is used for medical applications, in agriculture and in the environmental field, in the food and textile industries. Chitin is a biopolymer made up of units of N-acetyl-2amino-2deoxy-D-glucopyranose and 2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucose in pyranose form and linked to each other by 1-4 glycosidic bonds with an acetylation degree greater than 60%. Currently chitin is extracted from animal and vegetable sources of different nature such as, for example, crab shells, mushrooms, and yeasts. These sources are subject to seasonality, moderately long growth times and maintenance of specific conditions, for these reasons, over the last few years, the potential of Hermetia Illucens (Black Soldier Fly or BSF) has been investigated as this type of fly is able to grow on a variety of organic materials. Due to this characteristic, it is widely used as a means for the disposal of domestic organic waste. In the AIWTUC – EUROSTAR project: “An innovative way to use Chitin: from Organic Waste to functional fabrics”, the chitin was obtained from skin and exuviae BSF larvae and was characterized by Infrared Spectroscopy, X-Ray Diffractometry, solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H and 13C ss-NMR) and thermogravimetric analysis. These characterizations were conducted to investigate the chemical physics characteristics of the chitin obtained such as the degree of crystallinity, the degree of acetylation, the presence of residual proteins or melanin and the presence of polymorphisms, fundamental characteristics for determining the fields of application.