Green Processes for Chitin and Chitosan Production from Insects: Current State, Challenges, and Opportunities

Author: mycolabadmin
2025-04-26
View Source

Summary

This research examines environmentally friendly ways to extract valuable compounds called chitin and chitosan from insects. These natural polymers have many useful applications in food, medicine, and materials science. The study is important because traditional extraction methods use harmful chemicals that can damage the environment. Impacts on everyday life: • Development of more sustainable and eco-friendly materials for food packaging and medical applications • Reduction of environmental pollution from chemical processing • Creation of value from insect farming waste products • Support for the growing insect protein industry by finding uses for byproducts • Advancement of green chemistry practices that could be applied to other industrial processes

Background

Chitin and chitosan are valuable biopolymers with applications ranging from food to pharmaceuticals. Traditionally sourced from crustaceans, the rising demand paired with insect sector development has led to exploring insect biomass as an alternative source. Conventional extraction processes rely on hazardous chemicals, raising environmental concerns. Insects demonstrate notable efficiency in converting biomass into new food resources and contain significant amounts of chitin, ranging from 4.5% to 50% of dry weight depending on species and development stages.

Objective

This review aims to systematically compare chitin and chitosan yields across insect life stages and byproducts, evaluate reported green extraction workflows across over 30 processes from 16 studies, and assess sustainability considerations including solvent recovery, recycling potential, and standardized metrics. Additionally, methods for chitin quantification are reviewed to identify inconsistencies and their potential impact on reported yields.

Results

The review found that up to 35.7% chitin can be obtained from black soldier fly larval exoskeletons. While many processes are labeled as green, only a few demonstrated fully green extraction up to the chitin stage, such as bromelain, lactic acid fermentations, or NADES-based processes. No study achieved a fully green conversion to chitosan. Green workflows typically required materials with low fat content and minimal pretreatment. The effectiveness of different methods varied significantly across insect species and life stages.

Conclusion

The field of green chitin extraction from insects remains in early stages and requires further research. Insect matrices pose unique challenges demanding additional investigation across various species and life stages. There is a critical need for developing green pre-processing techniques and standardized measurement methods. Future research should focus on developing more efficient green solvents, optimizing extraction processes to reduce energy consumption, and exploring high-value uses for byproducts.

Published in:Polymers,
Study Type:Review,
Source: 10.3390/polym17091185