The Shirt off a Crab's Back
Pay attention, please. I'm about to give away an idea worth millions. Maybe. At least it should be worth a small grant from the Alaska Science and Technology Foundation. The foundation is always looking for commercially feasible schemes based on science, and there's commercial feasibility here. Honest.
The idea comes from an article in the March 1992 issue of Popular Science magazine. Titled "A Cure for Soggy Sandwiches," the article discusses new uses being found for chitin (pronounced KITE-in) and its derivatives. Natural chitin is a crystalline powder that resists solvents. Treated with sodium hydroxide, it becomes the soluble and useful chitosan, which is the most important of the derivatives. Using chitosan as the basis, materials scientists have produced an array of more complex synthetic compounds. The expanded family of chitosan compounds have provided the new uses, for applications ranging from cosmetics to clothing, with all kinds of nifty possibilities between.
This is good news for Alaskans, because we have a terrific supply of chitin. Right now, in fact, it's in a useless by-product of an important industry: crab shells. Alaskans have tried to use this bountiful raw material before, most notably as an additive to livestock feed, but without significant success. Now it may be time for us to exploit the research progress made by others.
The first likely practical application of that research appears in the article's title. The cure for sandwich sogginess is edible film wrap; in effect, its plastic you can eat. It's made from two parts chitosan and one part lauric acid, which---though it's sometimes found in soaps and shampoos---is derived from coconut oil. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved chitosan as fit for human consumption, but it is widely used in domestic Canadian and Japanese food products. U.S. manufacturers of prepared foods therefore have good cause to expect they can begin freezing pizza (sauce and dough in separate edible-film packages for longer freshness) or sealing military field rations in the new wrap. Even sliced fruit, unbrowned and unwilted for days on the shelf, may soon appear in chitosan wrap.
Next to follow may be chitosan cloth. Fibers spun from chitosan retain their strength when wet and have excellent wicking properties, making chitosan fabrics a probable choice for work clothes and sportswear. Since the raw materials making up the fibers are natural and nontoxic, chitosan cloth should be safe near or on human skin. Thus, it also looks promising for making bandages. (Such applications are a little more futuristic than edible food wrap because chitosan fiber is just too good at absorbing water---the effect can be like cooking spaghetti. Chemical cures exist for this problem, but fine-tuning seems to be needed.)
Chitosan's safety plus its moisture-loving properties make it useful in cosmetics, lotions, and shampoos. Chitosan is also biodegradable, and so won't build up in the environment.
Oh, yes---it also may be useful as a strengthening agent in paper.
The experts think this marvelous stuff has a great future: "Chitosan is where wood pulp was 60 or 70 years ago," according to one. But, according to Popular Science, there's one hitch. Nobody has a large-scale facility capable of extracting chitin from shellfish waste. Without enough chitin, development efforts are limited.
OK, Alaska, there's the challenge. Crack the chitin-extraction problem, build the large- scale plant, and the world will bless us. And pay us.
But we'd better hurry. Another natural source of chitin is in insect carapaces. If we don't make use of northern crab shells soon, what's to keep Texas from beating us out by making good on its cockroaches?
