Shrimp shells are not garbage

Shrimp shells can contribute significantly to the production of environmentally friendly biofuels.

Shrimp shells will no longer be wasted - Photo: Reuters

Chinese scientists are making progress in developing a catalyst made from shrimp shells, making biofuel production more environmentally friendly, less expensive and faster.

According to Dr Xinsheng Zheng and colleagues at Hoa Trung Agricultural University (Wuhan City), the world is now putting high hopes on renewable fuels such as biodiesel. However, biodiesel production requires catalysts to promote chemical reactions to turn soybean, canola and other vegetable oils into diesel fuel. Traditional catalysts cannot be reused and must be neutralized with a large volume of water, a resource is also becoming scarce. As a result, no less polluted wastewater is released into the environment.

Meanwhile, shrimp shells are often thrown into trash in large quantities during food processing. Shrimp shells contain a lot of chitin, a protein with a porous structure, which is very useful in the process of making catalysts. Dr. Zheng and his team created the catalyst by carbonizing part of the shrimp shell at a temperature of 450 ^° C, charging potassium fluoride (KF) at a rate of 25% by weight and activating at 250 ^° C. In experiments, shrimp shell catalysts turned canola oil into methanol faster and more efficiently than some traditional catalysts (converting over 89% in 3 hours). The new catalyst can also be reused and this process minimizes the production of polluting waste, according to the researchers' statement.