NTU scientists develop sustainable way to extract chitin from prawn shells by fermenting it with fruit waste

Scientists at NTU Singapore have developed a green way to create chitin, by using two forms of food waste - prawn shells and discarded fruit - and fermenting them.

Chitin serves a wide variety of uses in the food industry, such as food thickeners and stabilisers, and as anti-microbial food packaging. The NTU method is more sustainable than current approaches that chemically extract chitin from marine waste, which is costly, consumes large amounts of energy and leads to chemical by-products that may be discharged in industrial wastewater.

Six to eight million tons of crustacean waste are generated annually around the world, with 45 to 60 per cent of shrimp shells discarded as processing by-products.

Professor William Chen, Director of the Food Science and Technology programme at NTU, who led the research, said, “Our new method takes crustacean waste and discarded fruit waste and uses natural fermentation processes to extract chitin. This is not only cost-effective, but also environmentally-friendly and sustainable, and helps to reduce overall waste,”.