| 초록 |
Waste seashells from large-scale aquaculture of abalone or oysters have become serious environmental problems and the object of complaints due to bad smells. To solve these problems, the central and local governments have funded research to recycle the waste seashells which amount to nearly a million tons per year in Korea. The waste seashells are an excellent source material for high purity calcium carbonate powder for industrial applications as filler materials in paper, plastic and paint manufacturing and calcium phosphate powder for biomedical applications as bone and teeth cement. However, none of the research results have been to date translated to large-scale commercial productions mainly due to cost problems. One of the cost sensitive and cumbersome process is to remove the organic materials from the waste seashells. In research laboratories, expensive chemical reagents have been used to clean and remove the organic materials. To address the issue, we have tested various industrial grade low-cost detergents to see how these detergents effectively remove the organic materials from the waste seashells. We monitored the surface chemical changes using XPS (x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) and the morphological changes using SEM (scanning electron microscopy). Proposed will be the cost effective removal process by the detergents. |
