A new use for your old crab
27 Feb 2001
It might not seem like a big deal. But research into processing crab waste has won a Maryland-based research team the Outstanding Engineering Achievement of the Year award from the Engineering Society of Baltimore (ESB).
Indeed, the research work has resulted in the development of a new crab shell processing plant run by Chitin Work's America in Cambridge, MD, that has already successfully completed its first year of processing tons of nutrient-rich crab waste this past summer and fall.
That's good news because the crabmeat-packing industry of Maryland's Eastern Shore generates 5,000 tons/year of nutrient-rich wastes. And simply land filling the waste, at about $35-40/ton, could damage the industry, whose revenues have been declining in recent years.
The research into the process was carried out at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI')s Center for Agricultural Biotechnology (CAB) and coordination by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED).
'This project is converting a potentially polluting waste into a marketable product,' says Gregory Payne, CAB professor, who leads research to design new forms of the compound chitosan from crab shells. Already sold in products from cosmetics to dietary supplements, chitosan is made from chitin, the structural polymer in crustaceans, insects and some fungi.
CAB researchers are changing the basic chemistry of chitosan in order to create products such as water-resistant adhesives, lubricants for oil drilling, and thickeners for cosmetics and other consumer products. Louisiana-based Venture Innovations, an oil and gas firm is already purchasing the chitosan from Chitin Works.
Because there are nearly limitless changes that biochemists could make in a polymer as large as chitosan, there are many other potentially new products from crab shells. The key technical requirement is to learn how to controllably derivatize chitosan, or to 'tailor' its functional properties.
