(673g) Investigations into the Fabrication of Chitin Nanofibers Using Supercritical Anti-Solvent Precipitation

Chitin is a natural, highly abundant biopolymer that is the primary component of the exoskeletons of most arthropods, including crabs, prawns, and insects and also found in the cell wall of fungi. Chitin is so naturally abundant that it is second only to cellulose, but unfortunately the majority of it is just discarded as commercial waste. Chitin, though naturally fibrous, can be difficult to fibrillate due to its strong hydrogen bonding and insolubility in most common solvents. While there are currently several methods to fabricate chitin nanofibers mentioned in the literature including high-pressure homogenization, grinding with specially designed grinding stones, and electrospinning, chitin nanofibers are not commercially available. New methods and improvements to existing methods of chitin fibrillation are still necessary. In this study, commercially purchased chitin was dissolved in an ionic liquid and precipitated using supercritical anti-solvent precipitation with supercritical CO₂. The morphological and thermal properties of the resulting chitin were characterized and discussed in this work.