Comparison of Sustainable Lipid and Protein Removal Methods for the Isolation of Insect Chitin from Black Soldier Fly Exoskeleton

Abstract

Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens), an insect known for feeding on waste biomass and converting it into useful nutrients such as proteins, lipids, and chitin, has been reared on insect farms on a large scale. In this study, chitin was isolated from the exoskeleton of the black soldier fly using different extraction protocols, such as chemical solvents, enzyme-assisted fractionation, and supercritical carbon dioxide extraction. The levels of effectiveness of the recovery of the chitin fraction using different extraction methods were then evaluated by determining the physicochemical properties of the extracted insect chitin using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and X-ray diffraction. The results show that the use of eco-friendly acids and solvents such as lactic acid, acetic acid, and ethanol as well as bacterial proteases holds promise for the defatting, demineralization, and deproteinization of the exoskeleton to yield good quality chitin, albeit with impurities.