Scrambled Eggs or How Eggshells Become Phosphates

POTES VECINI, DIANA; JOFRÉ, SHIRLEY C.; PEREYRA RÍOS, FLORENCIA B.; SARTUQUI, JAVIER; MESSINA, PAULA; GONZÁLEZ, M. BELÉN; SAUGO, MELISA; MEIER, LORENA; DÍAZ, MÓNICA F.; CIOLINO, ANDRÉS E.

JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2019 vol. 96 p. 1443 - 1448

0021-9584

As part of the training activities planned for the ChemicalEngineering degree, in 2016, a group of students from the Chemical EngineeringLaboratory course was challenged to face a plausible reuse of discarded eggshells.A straightforward methodology to synthesize phosphates such as calciumpyrophosphate or fluoroapatite among others was developed using commercialphosphoric acid and discarded eggshells as starting materials. Throughout thedevelopment of this activity, topics such as recycling and reuse of discardedmaterials, guided-inquiry instruction, self-learning, and soft-skills developmentwere successfully covered. The strategy proposed in this work encouragesstudents to make connections between science and life and provides an excellentlinkage between chemical research and recycling without neglecting those basicsrequired by the official curriculum.