Analysis of physical properties and compressibility of avian eggshell nanopowders in solid state reaction

Abstract

Eggshell is bioceramic material that produces by avian that commonly contains of 94 % calcium carbonate, 1 % magnesium carbonate, 1 % calcium phosphate, and 4 % other organic element. This study proposed to investigate the synthesis and charac­terization of avian eggshell powders. The avian eggshell that used in this study involved chicken, duck, and quail eggshells. The characterization of avian eggshell nanopowder for reducing their grain size from micro to nano involved ball milling process (solid state reaction) with the variation of milling times (3, 5, and 7 hours) and sintering temperature at 1000 °C for 2 hours. X-Ray Dif­fraction (XRD) test presented the phase characterization of quail eggshell nanopowder which ball-milled for 7 hours, obtained the smallest crystallite size at 19.2 nm. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) test presented the morphological analysis that showed changes in grain size and shape of each variety of the avian eggshell such as spherical, oval, wormlike, cubical, triangular, and some irregular grains. Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX) test presented the compound in avian eggshell powders that showed Ca and O level were the highest, while C was the lowest level. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) test presented the possibility of the functional group of the avian eggshell powders that showed Ca-O, Ca=O groups, CaCO3, asymmetric C-O, -CO3, amide, C=O, -OH, alkyl CH, and C-H. While compressibility shown the increase along with the decrease of crystallite and particles size in cubical grain. The highest compression ratio is 67.75 % for chicken eggshell nano powder with 5 hours milling time at 2000 kgf of compression loading.