{"id":18825,"date":"2015-08-10T13:08:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T17:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=18825"},"modified":"2015-08-10T13:15:46","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T17:15:46","slug":"the-industrial-possibilities-of-shrimp-shells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/the-industrial-possibilities-of-shrimp-shells\/","title":{"rendered":"The Industrial Possibilities Of Shrimp Shells"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Had a meal from shellfish lately? What did you do with the shells? Toss them in the trash? Compost them<\/a>? Make stock<\/a>? Those shrimp shells, crab shells, and others aren’t just useful at the small scale of our kitchens:\u00a0in larger volumes, they’ve got great potential for industrial applications. And considering that 6-8 million metric tonnes (or 6.6-8.8 “short” tons) of these shells go into the waste stream each year, that could represent a huge redirection of “trash’ into economically viable materials<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to a new article in Nature<\/em><\/a>, seafood shells contain three chemicals that have multiple industrial applications: protein (for fertilizers and animal feeds), calcium carbonate (for pharmaceutical, agricultural, construction, and paper industries), and chitin (for a wide range of industries and CO2 sequestration). Here’s how the useful chemicals in those shrimp shells break down:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The last one may be the most exciting: as chitin is a nitrogen-rich compound, it’s pretty unique among forms of biomass. That also gives it real value on the industrial market: over 2 million metric tonnes of nitrogen-rich\u00a0Ethanolamine (ETA) are used each year, with $3.5 billion in sales. That doesn’t mean the other materials aren’t important on the sustainability front, though: calcium carbonate, for instance, otherwise comes from mined materials that may contain heavy metals.<\/p>\n