Biotechnological Applications of Eggshell: Recent Advances

Abstract

The eggshell (ES) provides protection against pathogenic and physical insults while supplying essential metabolic and nutritional needs for the growing avian embryo. It is constituted mainly of calcium carbonate arranged as calcite crystals. The global chicken egg production in 2018 was over 76.7 million metric tons. In industrialized countries, about 30% of eggs are processed at breaker plants that produce liquid egg products and large quantities of solid ES waste. ES waste is utilized for a variety of low-value applications, or alternatively is disposed in landfill with associated economic and environmental burdens. The number of patents pertaining to ES applications has increased dramatically in recent years; of 673 patents granted in the last century, 536 (80%) were published in the last two decades. This review provides a snapshot of the most recent patents published between 2015 and 2020, with emphasis on different biotechnological applications of ES waste, and summarizes applications for biomedical, chemical, engineering, and environmental technologies. Biomedical technologies include the production of calcium lactate, calcium phosphate, and health-promoting products, while chemical technologies include plant growth promoters, food processing and production, and biodiesel oil catalysis along with active calcium, carbon, soluble proteins, organic calcium, and ultrafine calcium carbonate sources. Engineering technologies address material engineering and nanoparticle production, while environmental technologies pertain to production of biomass, solubilization of sludge as well as production of magnetic ES adsorbents and adsorption of heavy metals, organics, total nitrogen and fluoride, soil pollutants, and radioactive compounds. Although the number of ES-based patents has exponentially increased in the last decade, exploration of innovative top-down approaches and ES development as a physical platform are new endeavors that are expected to further increase the upscaling of ES waste exploitation.

EIS Investigation of the Corrosion Behavior of Steel Bars Embedded into Modified Concretes with Eggshell Contents

“…On the one hand, it is recognized that the worldwide cement consumption is more than 4 billion tons (in 2020) [84] and eggshell can also be applied in other distinctive industrial applications [85,86]. On the other hand, it is believed that there exists feasible accountability to propose and adequate planning of the certain portion of the global chicken egg production (~80 million metric tons [86,87]) to be utilized in civil engineering (replacing structural concrete or cement paste applications since minimal compressive strength is attained).…”

Natural and Engineered Nanomaterials for the Identification of Heavy Metal Ions—A Review

“…Among various poultry wastes, eggshells have been of great interest in developing eggshell composites. The eggshells contain approximately 96% calcium carbonate and other organic materials [ 53 ]. Dayanidhi et al [ 54 ] recently developed a colorimetric detector naturally derived from unmodified eggshell powder.…”

Pathways for Sustainable Utilization of Waste Chicken Eggshell

“…To enhance its solubility, WCES can be treated and dissolved into acetic acid to convert it into liquid as organic fertilizer. Besides, new methods for the conversion and application of CaCO 3 derived from crushed WCES as organic fertilizers for various plants have been patented lately and documented in the literature [128]. The outcomes of the application of crushed WCES as organic fertilizer for cayenne pepper, cowpea, and sweet basil showed that the plants performed better in terms of growth, root length, and leaf quality more than the plants where commercial fertilizer was applied (Table 7).…”