INTRODUCTION

Chitin is the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is the main structural

component of the exoskeletons of the animals like insects with an outer skeleton that includes

shrimp, crab and lobster, which can also be obtained from other sources like fungi, mushrooms

and worms. Like cellulose it functions as a structural polysaccharide. Shrimp and crab are one of

the idea raw material for synthesis of chitin. Chitin from crab shells can be used to produce

chitin-derived products, such as chitosan also for bioplastic and nanostructured film. Chitosan is

natural and linear polysaccharides made from chitin by a chemical process. The crab shell is one

of the material that is very difficult to be degraded by microorganisms because of high CaCO2

contents. Crab shell is made up of three basic components namely chitin, protein and calcium

salts of which chitin are most important for scientific studies and crab shells contains 25-30%

chitin, 25% protein, 40-50% calcium carbonate. The isolation of chitin from different sources is

depends on source and also the percentage of chitin present. Nowadays, chitin and chitosan are

produced from shells of crabs and shrimp. The characteristics of chitin and chitosan mainly

depend on production processes and conditions. Crab shells proved to have mineral content in

the form of potassium phosphate which means derived from waste crab shells , this mineral must

be removed to take the chitin contained in the shell. Chitin and chitosan are both

polysaccharides, chemically similar to cellulose from which they differ by the presence or

absence of nitrogen in that nitrogen is not present in cellulose (Bautista-Banos et al. 2006).

Chitin is insoluble in water and must be dissolved in acid; chitosan is water-soluble. The

composition of harvested chitin is highly variable, even from a single source like lobsters. The

amount of metal and amino acid contaminants will depend on water quality and on diet, and they

can be quite difficult to remove. Shellfish including Crab, lobster and crayfish continue to

predominate due to at least two factors. The first is the growth of aquaculture, and the second is
the large increase in consumption of crustaceans. Chitosan solubility is affected by the presence

of free amine groups along the chitosan chain, which allow chitosan to dissolve in diluted

aqueous acidic solvents.

Antioxidants are the chemical substances that reduce or prevent oxidation. Natural antioxidants

are effective in protecting against oxidative damage and disease (Hayati 2011). It has been found

that chitosan has antioxidant activity and many chitosan derivatives have been synthesized and

their antioxidant activity assessed accordingly (Li et al. 1992). The antioxidant properties of

chitosan and its derivatives have been proposed for application in the biomedical, food,

agriculture, biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields (Yen et al. 2008). chitosan produced

from chitin by deacetylation process. In this study chitosan was produced from scallop shell

waste. The crab shell is also benefit to us that is effective in fighting cancer and as a natural

weight loss supplement. Crab shell is also a source of chitosan, which is a polysaccharide.