Production of nanochitins via a shell biorefinery process for self-assembly applications as photonic films and Pickering emulsions

Abstract

The concept of sustainable development is driving shell biorefineries to develop a cost-effective and environmentally benign approach to transform chitin into high-value products. This study describes a green, simple, and flexible shell biorefinery process for producing two kinds of nanochitins (NCh), chitin solid residues (ChSRs) and chitin nanocrystals (ChNCs), by using p-toluenesulfonic acid-assisted hydrothermal treatment. The ChSR is a bundled nanocrystal with a long length ranging from 100 nm to 450 nm and a width ranging from 10 nm to 30 nm. It has an excellent interfacial behavior between the water and oil phases due to its amphiphilic nature; thus, a foodstuff-related emulsion has been successfully fabricated from soybean oil and a ChSR suspension without the addition of any synthetic surfactants. The further hydrolysed ChNC with a length and width range of 25–225 nm and 15–30 nm, respectively, and a high zeta potential of 41 mV exists as an individual nanocrystal. Owing to the abundance of positively charged groups distributed on its surface, ChNC enables self-assembly to a highly ordered hierarchical structure. Hence, ChNCs show promising results in fabricating large-area photonic films, e.g. for application in bright and vivid automobile painting. Altogether, we provide a novel approach to produce NCh materials from crustacean shell waste and bridge the gap from process engineering to high-value product development.

Graphical abstract: Production of nanochitins via a shell biorefinery process for self-assembly applications as photonic films and Pickering emulsions

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
03 Jun 2024
Accepted
30 Sep 2024
First published
05 Oct 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Green Chem., 2024, Advance Article

Production of nanochitins via a shell biorefinery process for self-assembly applications as photonic films and Pickering emulsions

X. Zhu, F. Peng, H. Li, R. Lin, R. Lu and F. Lu, Green Chem., 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D4GC02680B

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