Am working on drug delivery by making chitosan microspheres, and i can not use any toxic solvents,
How to dissolve chitosan in DW without using toxic solvents like acetic acid.?
Chitosan should dissolved in DI but with heating and stirring for 15 minutes or more depend on the molecular weight
You can use small amount of acetic acid (1%) to make the chitosan ionized and soluble in water.
You have two options here.
You can de-polymerize your product by chemical or enzymatic cleavage.
Modification of your product ( zwitterionic, polyfuctional derivatives, such as chitosan salts)
You'd better decrease MW by chemical cleavage. Here the best option can be using hydrochloric acid (Article Kinetics of Hyaluronan Hydrolysis in Acidic Solution at Vari...
). Enzymatic cleavage makes the process more complicated. You'll further need to purify water soluble fraction from enzyme(s).At the beginning think over the MW you'll need. Cause, while obtaining microspheres cross-linking with other reagents, MW will surely become greater.
Good luck.
it is dis-solvable in 1% acetic acid solution. and if low molecular weight chitosan is there then it will be dissolve in hot distilled water.
You can add expose the water to CO2 before adding chitosan, please check this article:
A Novel Method of Dissolving Chitosan in Water for Industrial Application
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