Eggshell as an alternative source of calcium for nitrate fertilizer bead gel

Vichai  Domrongpokkaphan; Chantaraporn  Phalakornkule; Maneerat  Khemkhao

doi:10.6180/jase.202407_27(7).0001

Eggshell as an alternative source of calcium for nitrate fertilizer bead gel

Chemical Engineering Material Engineering

Vichai Domrongpokkaphan^1,2, Chantaraporn Phalakornkule^3,4, and Maneerat Khemkhao^2,5This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

¹Department of Agro-Industrial, Food and Environmental Technology, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok 10800, Thailand

²Microbial Informatics and Industrial Product of Microbe Research Center, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok 10800, Thailand

³Department of Chemical Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok 10800, Thailand

⁴Research Center for Circular Products and Energy, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok 10800, Thailand

⁵Rattanakosin College for Sustainable Energy and Environment, Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin, Nakhon Pathom 73170, Thailand

Received: April 12, 2023
Accepted: July 9, 2023
Publication Date: November 4, 2023

Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.

Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.202407_27(7).0001

The chicken eggshell was applied as an alternative calcium source to produce calcium nitrate fertilizer. 12 g of eggshell waste was used as raw material for extraction into liquid calcium nitrate by a 100 mL of 10%(v/v) nitric acid solution. The liquid calcium nitrate fertilizer was encapsulated through the wet-extrusion process, in which calcium ions from liquid calcium nitrate as crosslinking agents and sodium alginate as an absorbent polymer. 73.57% of nitrate was absorbed by the droplet of 2%(w/v) sodium alginate, forming sphericallike gel structures. The optimal hardening time for bead gel formation was 120 min. The average size of wet bead gels was 4.29 ± 0.34 mm. The bead gels were oven-dried at 45^◦C for 1 hour to maintain their shapes. Among other controlled release agents, pectin showed the slowest nitrate release from fertilizer bead gel. The chemical nature of bead gels characterized by FTIR indicated that nitrate was absorbed by alginate polymer incorporated with pectin, binding with the Ca²⁺ ions.

Keywords: bead gel, calcium nitrate, control release agent, eggshell, encapsulation, fertilizer

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