Rheological and Antioxidant Characterization of Chitin and Chitosan Extracted with Different Acids

Chitin and its deacetylated derivative chitosan are biopolymers with many applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries mainly. There are many papers where the extraction of chitin is described and in most of them HCl is used in the step of demineralization of shrimp shells, in this paper we introduce the use of three organic acids and two mineral acids in the step demineralization in the process of extraction of chitin from shells of shrimp (Parapenaeus longirostis, Lucas 1846) in order to determine its effectiveness in the process, for this purpose the chitin obtained was deacetylated and intrinsic viscosity and molecular weight of resulting chitosan was measured. We have also studied the antioxidant activity having the resulting chitosan using the beta-carotene bleaching method and DPPH radical scavenging activity, resulting that chitosan obtained from chitin in which demineralization process we used citric acid presents the highest antioxidant activity in both cases.