Date: Jul 30, 2014 Author: Ed Enogh Source: (
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The researchers behind the company see the process as a potential boon for the seafood industry, noting the seafood processors currently are either paying to store or dispose of the shells as a waste by-product or processing the material and attempting to sell it as fertilizer.
TUSCALOOSA -- University of Alabama chemist Robin Rogers imagines a future where shrimp shells could become more than a smelly seafood byproduct.
"I believe in what I would call a chitin economy. I personally believe, if properly developed, the material you can develop from chitin and the markets you could sell them in would make the shrimp shell worth more than the meat," said Rogers, an owner and founder of 525 Solutions, a startup company housed in UA's Alabama Innovation and Mentoring of Entrepreneurs center on campus.
The company, which is exploring a host of applications for chitin extracted from the shells, received roughly $1.5 million from U.S. Department of Energy to fund its research of a chitin-based absorbent material for use in a process to extract uranium from the ocean.
The company previously proved the concept of using the chitin-based material for the application.
Gabriela Gurau, a chemist and CEO of the UA-based company, said the company is in the process of signing the contract for the grant.
"In our proposal, there is no way we as a small company can compete with terrestrial mining," said Rogers, a Robert Ramsay Chair of Chemistry at UA and director of UA's Center for Green Manufacturing. "We are not going to be a mining company. What we are going to do is develop chitin that is lower cost because we have other uses for the material."
The company is also exploring biomedical and other applications. The company received a National Science Foundation grant in 2012 for its work on a new chitin-based bandage.
The grant from the Department of Energy's Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program will enable the company to scale up the process and test the economic feasibility of using the chitin-based absorbent material as a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly alternative to plastics for the extraction of uranium from seawater.
The company is collaborating with a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin studying the cost effectiveness of the process and Jonathan Bonner of civil and environmental engineering firm CFM Group of Tuscaloosa.
The company's work begins with dried shrimp shells from the Gulf Coast Agricultural and Seafood Co Op in Bayou La Batre. The shells are ground to a consistency similar to a fine table salt, said Julia Shamshina, the company's chief technology officer.
The researchers behind the company see the process as a potential boon for the seafood industry, noting the seafood processors currently are either paying to store or dispose of the shells as a waste by-product or processing the material and attempting to sell it as fertilizer.
