“Shrimps, crabs, crustaceans, a large proportion of their body weight contains chitin,” says Prof. Dr Volker Sieber a biochemist at Fraunhofer IGB’s Chibio Project.

“Chitin is a polysaccharide, a polymer, which is composed of sugar molecules. Sugar molecules can be chemically or biotechnologically engineered to produce different molecules.”

Crab shells contain other non-renewable biological substances. Used to produce biogas, they become a viable energy source. Meanwhile, biochemists from Munich have developed optimized yeast strains to convert the chitin through fermentation into fatty oils. The process takes between 5 and 7 days.