Chitin is the only nitrogen based abundantly available natural biopolymer and its derivatives have wide applications in food/health supplements, cosmetics, biomaterials, coagulants and adsorbents used in water treatment. Species of Trichoderma are effective chitinolytic enzyme producing fungi. The raw chitin procured from Enviro Biotech Pvt. Ltd, is used as substrate for enzymatic degradation by Trichoderma species, which acts only on modified chitin, thus the raw chitin is treated with mineral acid to obtain colloidal form. Hydrolysis experiments are carried out under optimum conditions of media pH and temperature of incubation to study the production of N- acetyl D- glucosamine (GlcNAc) and tyrosine. Seed media, chitinolytic enzyme concentrate, inoculum containing varying pellet numbers were utilized as source of enzyme. Experiments are conducted as function of incubation time, volume and pH of enzyme concentrate, substrate concentration and speed of orbital shaker. Oxygen transfer phenomenon is studied by means of volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient using lab scale fermenter to understand the hydrolysis of colloidal chitin in different environment but under same optimum conditions.
