Noemi Zaritzky: Technology perspectives in Argentina
Noemi Zaritzky who is working for CIDCA (UNLP- CONICET- CIC), CENPAT (CONICET) and the Faculty of Engineering of the National University de La Plata showed in her presentation an example how chitosan can be obtained when using the residues of the crab fishing industry. A large amount of exoskeletons accumulates in the fishery centre of Puerto Madryn (Patagonia-Argentina) which is on the one hand a source of contamination, yet on the other hand as well a rich source of chitin. Out of this chitin it is possible to win, using deacetylation, chitosan which is a linear polysaccharide and which has a number of commercial and possible biomedical uses.
Chitosan can serve as antifungal or antiviral, it is biocompatible, biodegradable, antimicrobial, non-toxic, emulsifying, fat absorber, adsorbent of contaminated metals, flimogenic etc.. Possible fields of use are environment, biochemical analysis, analytical chemistry, biomedicine, agriculture and breeding as well as the industry. There is an international demand for chitosan (market prediction for 2018: 18 000 tones/year; latest market growth: 13-17%/year) and as well a national demand in Argentina (2 tonnes/year) which have to be imported. The costs range from 20 $/kg for chitosan used for industrial water treatment to 2 400 $/kg for highly purified chitosan. The raw material for chitosan (chitin) is available in Puerto Madryn at amounts of more than 3 500 tonnes/year.
In order to use this potential the process of obtaining chitosan from residues should be optimised and the possible use for water treatment should be investigated.
Zaritzky et Al. managed to gain chitosan out of the residues of the fishing industry. They could develop nano and micro particles of chitosan meshed with tripolyphosphate and they managed to adsorb the toxic hexavalent chromium out of the process.
In another project the use of chitosan for clarification of waste water from the petrol industry was investigated. The team managed to find appropriate aggregation conditions of chitosan to totally destabilize the waste water emulsions in the presence of the used ionic surfactant. The pollutants flocked together and settled because of gravity. The potential as treatment of waste water of chitosan as flocculant and coagulating agent in petrol or hydrocarbon emulsion systems could be proven.
Ms Zaritzky concluded that the biopolymer can be obtained out of residues from the fishery industry and thus the use of it is a sustainable solution for environmental problems caused by this industry.