The quick extraction of chitin from an epizoic crustacean species (Chelonibia patula)

Chitin was isolated from the shells of Chelonibia patula (barnacle, Crustacea), which lives on blue crab epizoically, following a 10-min demineralisation process through HCl and a 20-min deproteinisation process through NaOH. Due to the low-crystalline structure, and mineral-rich and low-protein content of the shells, chitin isolation was convenient. It was observed that the shell structure of C. patula contains 3.11% chitin per its dry weight. Following characterisation of the isolated chitin by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffractometry, elemental analysis and scanning electron microscopy, it was determined that there was close similarity with the α-chitin isolated from crabs, shrimps and insects in various studies. It was observed that chitin was composed of nanofibres with a width of 10-20 nm. It was concluded that this was an economically advantageous chitin resource compared with crustaceans such as shrimp, crayfish and crab, because it is possible to isolate chitin in a significantly shorter time.