Shrimp shells that would otherwise be thrown away by the seafood industry have been turned into tough fibres that can harvest valuable metals from water.Robin Rogers, and his team at the University of Alabama in the US, had long been interested in using ionic liquids to process cellulose but the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 encouraged them to try something similar with chitin, the structural biopolymer that makes up the shells of various crustaceans. ‘We started working with the Gulf Coast Agricultural and Seafood Co-Op in Bayou La Batre, looking at uses for their shrimp shell waste, about the same time as the moratoriums on shrimping. It was quite clear that new products and profits were needed.’
Read the full article in Chemistry World»
Read the original journal article in Green Chemistry – it’s free to access until 9th April:
Surface modification of ionic liquid-spun chitin fibers for the extraction of uranium from seawater: seeking the strength of chitin and the chemical functionality of chitosan
Patrick S. Barber, Steven P. Kelley, Chris S. Griggs, Sergei Wallace and Robin D. Rogers
Green Chem., 2014, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C4GC00092G, Paper
