Optimization of Degree of Deacetylation of Chitosan Snail Shells (Pilla ampulaceae)

Abstract

Snails fields (Pilla ampulaceae) have a hard shell and are known to be one of the sources of biomaterial called chitin. Chitosan is a natural biopolymer that can be obtained from chitin deacetylation. The objective of this study was to obtain the optimum conditions of chitin deacetylation in highest degree deacetylation of chitosan. This study used random complete method that contains various of NaOH concentration (30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 %), temperature of deacetylation (60, 90, 120, 150 and 180 °C), time of deacetylation (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 h) and ratio between NaOH and chitin (1:4, 1:6, 1:8, 1:10 and 1:12 b/v) with three repetitions. The deacetylation degrees of chitosan were determined by FTIR. The results show the optimum condition of deacetylation degrees of NaOH concentration, temperature, time and ratio of NaOH and chitin are 60 %, 150 °C, 4 h and 1:10, respectively. This produces the highest deacetylation degree of chitosan rate of 83.23 %.