Effect of chitin nanowhiskers isolated through dilute acid pretreatment on the properties of O/W Pickering emulsions co-stabilized with gelatin

This study developed a dilute acid pretreatment method (0.3 M HCl) for the efficient production of nanochitin, achieving a yield of 87.14%. The obtained nanofibrils measured 271.15 ± 13.64 nm in length and 10.25 ± 0.50 nm in width, with a crystallinity of 87.15%. This strategy demonstrated a comparable hydrolysis effect to the conventional 3 M HCl method. A Pickering emulsion with smaller droplets and excellent emulsification performance was prepared by homogenizing nanochitin and gelatin at a total mass concentration of 1%. When the nanochitin-to-gelatin ratio was 5:5, the storage modulus of the emulsion was approximately 2.5 times that of the system stabilized by gelatin alone. Furthermore, increasing the mass concentration above 2% resulted in the formation of an emulsion gel, which exhibited significantly enhanced rheological performance and stability.