United Chitotechnologies' team manufactures    Chitin, all grades of Chitosan,  Glucosamine hydrochloride and Glucosamine Sulfate worldwide. These products are manufactured to our customer specifications with assured quality by our factory trained personnel and supported by on-site laboratory quality control. We operate a self imposed current Good Manufacturing Practices facilities, with state-of-the art laboratories.

In large commercial scale operations such as ours, chitin is extracted from crustacean shells by first thoroughly washing the shells to remove the loose protein and foreign materials. Washed shells are demineralized by treating with dilute hydrochloric acid. The demineralized shells are deproteinized with dilute hot caustic solution to dissolve matrix bound proteins and other organic materials. The result is crude chitin.

Further treatment of chitin with hot concentrated caustic solution deacetylates the chitin yielding chitosan. Caustic solution concentration variations, reation time and solution temperature yields chitosans of different degrees of deacetylation, molecular weights and viscosities.

In another application, we convert crude chitin to Glucosamine hydrochloride by reacting the chitin with hot concentrated hydrochloric acid. The solubalized chitin is diluted with water and the solution coarse filtered. The filtrate is stirred with activated charcoal and the solution filtered again to yield a pale yellow color.

The resulting solution is concentrated thermally under vacuum to a fraction of its original volume, during which time glucosamine crystals appear. The concentrate is treated with ethanol and left to cool. Glucosamine hydrochloride crystals separate from the solution and precipitate. The crystals are collected, successively washed and vacuum dried.

Marine proteins and flavorings are extracted as an added value product from the fresh hygienically collected shell stock. The washed shell stock is treated with food grade protein enzymes under controlled conditions. The recovered protein hydrolsate is pasteurized, thereon vacuum dried and passed through desired mesh sized screen.