Abstract:
Fish and seafood processing large and small scale industries generate large quantities of waste, which are at the origin of several environmental, economic and social problems. However, fish waste contains high value-added substances such as chitin and chitosan. In Ethiopia, Arba Minch is one of the leading areas of fish production zone and hence everyday lot of fish wastes has been generated due to this. This work has focused on the extraction and characterization of chitin and chitosan from fish wastes generated in Lake Chamo, Arba Minch and evaluation of chitosan efficiency as clarifying agent for apple juice clarification. The obtained chitin and chitosan have been characterized by using techniques like spectral analysis and parameters including yield, moisture and ash content, solubility, degree of deacetylation (DDA), WBC, FBC, viscosity and Mw of the recovered chitosan and its application as clarifying agent on the apple juice clarification have been carried out. The results obtained from this study show that the yield of chitin and chitosan were 29.88 ± 0.01 and 15.87 ± 0.14, respectively. The moisture and ash content, DD, solubility, FBC, WBC,0.16, 85.25 ± 0.28, 94.3 ± 0.99, 391.17 ± 0.13, 461.34 ± 0.42, 4.4215 ± 0.0101 and 155,730.4870 ± 1.1, respectively. Based on these characteristics, chitosan, extracted from Nile tilapia fish scale waste, was of standard quality for industrial application. The extracted chitosan at different concentrations were used for apple juice clarification. The reduction in TSS value from (12.67 to 9.20), titratable acidity (2.38 to 1.61) and turbidity (320.2 to 86.6) after treatments have confirmed the effectiveness of chitosan on apple juice clarification. The reduction in titratable acidity has been supported by increase in pH value (3.19 to 4.29). The sensory evaluation of control juice and chitosan added juice samples were performed and it has been observed that chitosan concentration of up to 0.25 g/l was accepted by theconsumers.
