Preparation of amino monosaccharide from acid hydrolysis of alfla-chitin using ultrasonication

Abstract

Amino monosaccharide is an important class of sugar used as nutraceutical agents and chemical building blocks for biologically active compounds. In this thesis, hydrolyses of shrimp α-chitin in concentrated hydrochloric acid to produce amino monosaccharide were studied. At high hydrolysis temperature, 90-150 ℃, the hydrolysis produced 2-ammonium-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose chloride salt (D-glucosamine hydrochloride salt, GlcNHCl) as the only isolated product. The optimum hydrolysis temperature and time for preparation of GlcNHCl were 120 min and 120 ℃, respectively, where the reaction typically gave 65% isolated yield with essentially 100% pure of GlcNHCl. With sonication assisted solubilization, the hydrolysis was conducted at lower temperature, 30-40 ℃, that yielded 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose (N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, (GlcNAc) as a major product. A reasonable 37% yield and 95% purity of GlcNAc was obtained from the hydrolysis at 30℃ for 4 hours.