Obtainment of chitosan with different molecular weight by varying chitin decarbonation conditions and study of a mathematical model representing the process

The effects of different chitin decarbonation conditions on chitosan molecular weight have been studied. The factors that could affect chitosan molecular weight and that have been studied in this work are temperature, time and hydrochloric acid concentration; the factor that proved to mostly affect the chitosan molecular weight is the temperature, followed by time and acid concentration. The effect of chitin molecular weight on the finally obtained deacetylation degree has also been studied, and proved to be almost irrelevant. The effect on chitosan molecular weight given by deacetylation carried out with different NaOH concentration has been analyzed; this factor proved to give inversely proportional effect on chitosan molecular weight.