Evaluation of food wastes as a medium to produce chitin-glucan nanofiber from .

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This study investigated the potential of using food waste as a growth media for chitin-glucan nanofiber production by . For that purpose, a local hotel food waste was used to prepare four different media based on the protein and polysaccharide content of the waste. Optimal fermentation conditions, including medium composition, inoculum size of , incubation time, and shaking speed in biomass production, were determined using the 4 × 4 Taguchi experimental design. The characterization of produced chitin-glucan nanofiber was determined using FESEM, FT-IR, and NMR. The experimental design results showed that the highest amount of chitin-glucan nanofiber was found as 1.9 g/l at pH 5 and 30 °C with 58.82% yield. Optimal conditions for the highest yield were observed when the media containing 20% fruit-vegetable-rich waste, 30% protein-rich waste, and 50% polysaccharide-rich waste was used with an 8 mm inoculation size of at 6 d incubation time with 100 RPM shaking speed. Characterization studies have shown that chitin-glucan nanofibers obtained from wastes are equivalent to their commercial counterparts. The use of food wastes to produce chitin-glucan nanofiber from can save costs and significantly reduce environmental pollution.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13197-024-06088-9.