Upcycling chitin-containing waste into organonitrogen chemicals via an integrated process
Xiaoqiang Ma, Gökalp Gözaydın, Hui Ying Yang, Wenbo Ning, Han Xi, Nga Yu Poon, Hong Liang, Ning Yan, Kang Zhou
Abstract
Significance Shell biorefinery is an emerging concept that upcycles the major component of crustacean shell waste and the like (chitin-rich) into value-added chemicals and materials. To date, the utilization of waste-derived chitin as carbon and nitrogen sources to produce value-added nitrogen-containing chemicals (NCCs) via microbial fermentation has been underexplored. The lack of a compatible pretreatment method in conjunction with a customized NCC-producing strain has placed a major impediment to the valorization effort. This study tackles this challenge by developing an integrated biorefinery process that combines an efficient pretreatment process with a highly customizable microbial engineering platform, opening a door for the better use of crustacean shell waste-derived chitin as a substrate for microbial manufacturing.