September 28, 1999

MARYLAND CRAB SHELLS TO CRACK NEW MARKETS

COLLEGE PARK, MD--Tons of nutrient-rich crab waste discarded at cost by pick and pack companies along Maryland rivers may soon be recycled into new industrial products, according to Gregory Payne of UMBI's Center for Agricultural Biotechnology (CAB) and state officials.

Payne and co-workers at CAB, a research center of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI), will receive half of a $400,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to change crab shells into new forms of chitosan. Already sold in products from cosmetics to dietary supplements, chitosan is made from chitin, the structural polymer in crustaceans, insects and some fungi.

The newly formulated chitosan, suitable for industrial uses, will be produced on a large-scale by a Cambridge, MD-based crab waste recycling plant, in cooperation with Payne's laboratory. Properties of the new chitosan, for example, make it valuable in fluids used in drilling oil and gas wells, says Payne, a biochemical engineering professor.

The new funding is a phase II small business grant that NSF awarded to Louisiana-based Venture Innovations, Inc., an oil and gas firm. UMBI is a research subcontractor under the grant. In January 1998, NSF awarded Venture a Phase I grant to "bench test" chitosan for industrial drilling. The phase II grant will allow field testing, according to NSF.

"We are quite excited by this second NSF grant. The phase one was to see if such a process was feasible; now, with phase two, I think they know we have proven that it can benefit the public," says Colleen Dove, CAB's assistant director.

The university-industry partnership developed in 1996 when Dan Healey, director of investment financing with the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED), introduced Venture officials to Pat Condon, general manager of New Earth Services, Inc. For the past six years, NES has composted crab shell waste to produce a horticultural soil additive.

This fall, as the Chesapeake Bay crabbing harvest peaks, Condon is directing the completion of the recycling plant in a former warehouse in downtown Cambridge. Called Chitin Works, Inc., the crab shell plant is a joint endeavor of Venture and NES. Condon says, "We have told the crab picking industry, we will take their chum (waste) for free."

"Yes, this will be a big help," says Joe Brooks, co-owner of the J.M. Clayton company that picks and packs crabmeat near Cambridge Creek. Standing near a dump truck receiving chum from a conveyor belt running out of his plant, Brooks adds, "I am paying a farmer to haul this from here, so Pat is doing us a service. He's got a better solution."

But for much of the crab shell waste generated, "nobody really knows where it all goes," says Ken Lathroum, director of the Beulah Land Fill, Dorchester's only county-operated, solid waste facility. "We have no way of enforcing mandatory tracking because there is no statutory law to cover it. Actually, it makes no sense to bring it here. It can be used for its nutrient value elsewhere (on farms). Very little goes into the land fill." The landfill charges $38.25 ton to dispose the waste, says Lathroum.

DBED's Healey says even before Pfiesteria outbreaks two years ago, the state began investing in better ways to manage the 5,000 tons of nutrient-rich waste generated from Maryland's crab packing industry each year. He says the industry is composed mostly of small operations with modest profits at best. Dorchester County, including Cambridge, accounts for about half the crabmeat picked in the state. "Finding a way to give crab waste added value will help Maryland's Eastern Shore get rid of an unwanted environmental waste and boost the economy of the county," says Healey.

The Chitin Works process begins as dump trucks arrive with chum from any of 35 to 40-crab meat packing companies on the Eastern Shore. The chum is first mixed with a highly caustic soda at pH 13 in a 20,000 gallon, 35-foot long metal tank to stop microbial decomposition. The first product is chitin, which is further processed into chitosan. "We had to design all this equipment from scratch. Nobody has invited us to into their (chitosan processing) facility," says Condon.

He adds, "This can be a nasty, smelly by-product of the crab industry, but we create a resource from it. Because of quick and efficient processing, we have no odor problem. We can accommodate all the chum in Dorchester County and our goal is to process 3,000 tons a year." He also says the plant will not produce any pollution. Water is continually recycled and solid waste not converted to chitosan is sent to the NES composting site.

During the first few of years of Chitin Works, says Payne, CAB will integrate new "enzyme modifications" to chitosan. He describes a two-fold CAB research role, "We will characterize the chemical interactions in Venture's chitosan formulations and develop environmentally more friendly techniques using enzymes to produce chitosan derivatives." Payne has a joint appointment with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.