I extracted chitin with chemical method, now I would like to know approximatly the efficiency of my method and know for example how much proteins and minerals are left. I would like to find a method that does not require very specific and expensive equipments.
How about atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS)? Measure the washout solution of chitin and determine the concentration.
I don't have that type of machine that is why I was asking for a simple and cheap method.
I do have a spectrophotometer though
You can always prepare your own contaminated standards with a pure chitin sample (from an established supplier), pure calcium carbonate and a "representative" pure protein, and investigate their differences with the tools you have in hand (e.g. intimate mixtures of 0-20-40-60-80-100 wt.% pure-chitin). If you measure triplicates of those standard contaminated mixtures with an infrared spectrometer (ATR FT-IR is convenient and a relatively cheap instrument found in most analytical laboratories), you can try to see how pure-chitin's characteristic (including unique) peaks (10.3390/md8051567) compare to the "contaminated" peaks (or let's say how they deviate or distort), and finally see how your own extracted-chitin samples compare. You can surely get a rough idea of purity, and the more consistent and accurate you are with your standard mixtures and triplicate (spectroscopic) measurements, the more certain you will be on your extracted chitin's purity.
If Elemental Analysis (EA) is easy to do, then have a feel of the ratios of the numbers in the supporting info of this paper (10.1039/c003583a).
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