Study of Chitosan Extraction from Insects to Remove Metal Ions In Waste Water

Chitosan is a derivative ofchitin and has numerous applications ranging from cosmetics
to substrate material for membranes. This project is aimed to investigate the feasibility
of producing a derived chitosan from insects by chemical extraction methods available
in the chemical laboratory. Other objective is to use the chitosan in the waste water to
remove the heavy metals ion. Common cockroaches (Homasilpha vicinia) are the
specimen used in the experiment for chitin extraction.
The production ofchitosan involves few method ofextraction namely demineralization,
deproteination, deacetylation, and acid extraction of chitin. Demineralization is the
removal of minerals, primarily calcium carbonate (CaC03). Deproteination was
conducted using diluted sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as treatments. Deacetylation then
was done to obtain the chitosan using theconcentrated NaOH andacetic acid.
As the chelating agent, for heavy metal ions oflead (Pb2+), nickel (Ni2+), copper (Cu2_f)
and zinc (Zn2+), chitosan can remove 95% and above of the heavy metal ions from the
50 ppm solution. Chitosan shows better result if compared to the chitin. At 50 ppm
concentration solution, reduction oflead ions (Pb2+) was at 100% with 0.20 gchitosan,
99.93% for nickel ions (Ni2+) with 0.25 gchitosan, 97.30% for copper ions (Cu2+) with
0.10 gchitosan and 97.62% for zinc ions (Zn2+) with 0.25 g chitosan.