The depletion of petroleum has created a need for a renewable source of feedstock chemicals for advanced materials and energy. Biopolymers have been shown to be a potential source for these feedstock chemicals. Chitin is the second most abundant biopolymer in the world and represents a promising source of renewable energy. A derivative of glucose, chitin is a polymer with repeating N-acetylglucosamine units and is a main component in the exoskeleton of crustaceans and the cell wall of fungi. Mushrooms are a great source for chitin because they grow quickly and are abundant. Chitin can be isolated from the cell walls of mushrooms by a series of chemical treatments. The resulting chitin is of a lower crystallinity than that obtained from crustaceans, making for easier processing with ionic liquids. It has been shown in the past that ionic liquids possess the ability to dissolve a variety of polymers and biopolymers, including chitin, and can be modified to contain an acid functionality. The dissolution of chitin opens up the polymer matrix making it susceptible to hydrolysis from acid catalysts such as a Bronsted acid functionalized ionic liquid. This research will focus on the use of acid functionalized ionic liquids for the hydrolysis of chitin isolated from various mushrooms such as <i>Trametes cubensis</i> and <i>Ganoderma lucidum</i>. This study will look at the effects of temperature and catalyst structure on the products obtained from the hydrolysis reaction. It will also compare the hydrolysis products from chitin sources: crustacean and fungi.

Hydrolysis of fungal chitin utilizing ionic liquids as a solvent and catalyst

249th National Meeting (2015)

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