No word in yet from the Easter Bunny…
Scrambling for climate change solutions
Eggshell membrane can absorb 7 times its weight in carbon dioxide
The food industry generates a lot of waste products, but one of these, eggshells, could help combat climate change, according to research published in the International Journal of Global Warming this month.
Basab Chaudhuri of the University of Calcutta and colleagues have demonstrated that the membrane that lines an eggshell can absorb almost seven times its own weight of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide thus trapped could be stored in this form until energy-effective methods of using the gas could be found that would not compound the environmental problems associated with carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide is widely used in the chemical industry for the preparation of a wide range of products as well as in some settings as an alternative to toxic solvents. It might also one day be possible to efficiently convert trapped carbon dioxide into a clean fuel.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been rising since the mid-nineteenth century when fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – first began fuelling the industrial revolution. The rise in average global temperatures seen in recent decades is due mainly to the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In 2005, carbon dioxide levels were more than a third higher than they had been prior to the industrial revolution; rising from 280 parts per million by volume of gas to 381 ppm. As of October 2010, the concentration is 388 ppm. To put these numbers into perspective, almost 300 billion tonnes of carbon have been released into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and cement production since 1751, but half of this carbon has been released since the mid-1970s.
The Calcutta team explains that eggshell comprises three layers, a cuticle on the outer surface, a spongy calcium-containing middle layer and inner layer. The second and third layers are composed of protein fibers bonded to calcium carbonate. The membrane is just below the shell and is about 100 micrometers thick. Separating the membrane from the cuticle is currently not an efficient process. But, given that India alone consumes 1.6 million tonnes of eggs each year, there is certainly an incentive for improving on this situation in order to use the membrane material in climate change amelioration.
Chaudhuri and colleagues have demonstrated that a weak acid can be used to separate the membrane from the shell for use as a carbon dioxide adsorbant. The researchers point out that a mechanical separation method would be needed to make the process viable on an industrial scale. However, Chaudhuri also muses that we could all help reduce CO2 levels by exposing our egg membranes to the air after eating our eggs.
“Utilisation of eggshell membrane as an adsorbent for carbon dioxide” in Int. J. Global Warming, 2010, 2, 252-261
Let me guess, this has to be one of those ponzi journals where you have to PAY $800 – $1500 to get your name in a “peer” review journal (where nothing gets reviewed except the signature on your cheque).
If it wasn’t late October I’d be checking if we were near April Fools’ day. But what passes for science these days is becoming a year round joke.
Seriously, this has to be someone having a laugh after smoking too much hash.
Someone should tell Patchi that this would be a good lead into his next novel – both IPCC 5 and the bodice ripper 2.
Isn’t it time to take carbonated beverages off the shelves. They’re forever leaking into the atmosphere. Maybe an egg shell filter on the cap would save the planet?
This would probably mean war between the CO2 contingent and PETA.
Great calculations, Larry Chickola. They’re going into the archive.
Sorry to blog-whore but E.M. Smith’s post (complete with calculations) on the CO2 sequestration of trees puts a lot of this into perspective. It certainly opened my eyes.
I really, really hope this whole thing is a piss take. I’m expecting talking white rabbits and playing cards to come by any minute now.
We are being dragged into the next Little Ice Age with the start of the present Grand Solar Minimum, and scientists are examining egg shells to sequester a trace gas that has nothing to say about where the climate is heading.
When is this nonsense going to stop? With the passing of each worsening winter!
Climate mitigation is built on eggshells (fragile) in the same manner that Green Energy flirts with perpetual motion.
Cannabis sativa is a weed that grows rapidly and is easily cultivated. Instead of focusing on egg shells as a sequestration medium, I suggest one more popular, and far more practical.
The growth of this carbon sequestration medium by individuals should be encouraged on a vast scale. Carbon is held captive, stopping dreaded Global Warming in its tracks.
In the event, as AGWers are known to advocate, they were right, then we’ve done a good thing. If the planet suddenly, and contrary to AGW theory ( we all know THAT’S not possible..) starts cooling, then the people could begin to burn off supplies of the plant to stimulate warming. The spin-off benefits of that would be unprecedented in human history! The economy would feel an almost instant stimulus.
…..Starting with pizza sales…
So which was first again? The chicken or the egg? I’m not being sarcastic, this is science. I got it figured this way. They say that birds are direct descendents of dinasaurs. Now the dinasaurs died because the earth cooled off. So musta been all the eggs being laid by all the chickens that cooled it off by sucking all the CO2 out of the atmosphere. But the dinos laid eggs too, so maybe their eggs didn’t suck CO2 like the chicken eggs did. Puts the phrase ‘go suck an egg’ in a new perspective.
Now that said, I saw several people comment that the amount of co2 released to get the gooky stuff which COMPRISES (see, I was paying attention) the inner layers would be more than what gets sucked up. Probably so, but if you’re gonna jump all over the warmistas over the consequences of the strategy, then I propose you let an old farm boy do the talkin’.
YOUR EGGS MUST COME FROM THE STORE ALL NICE AND CLEAN AND THATS WHY YOU MORONS DONT SEEM TO BE AWARE THAT CHICKENS SH*T LIKE YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE AND THAT STENCH FROM THE CHICKEN KOOP IS METHANE.
The journal or irreproducible results?
Re John Kehr says:
October 26, 2010 at 8:49 am
Yes John, sometimes the logic neurons just freeze in protest.
They forgot about feed backs, could we not adhere the egg shells to our roofs and increase the albedo? This idea gets better all the time, I need another $75,000 to study it, if you please.
So, do modern egg membranes have more CO2 in them
than those of 150 years ago ?
Can the difference, if any, be measured ?
Are egg membranes a possible proxy for CO2 levels ?
Inquiring minds want to know…
Would Chudhuri be related to Pachauri?
This must give rise to a variant on the “why did the chicken cross the road” joke but I can’t think of one right now. Can someone help me out?
I wonder how many chicken breaths produce the CO2 content of a single eggshell?
Two things not mentioned:
The shells themselves are carbonate and sequester a heck of a lot more co2.
The membranes are not prevented from sucking up ambient co2 now so they are already doing this work.
Now the real deal missed by these guys with white lab coats and horn-rimmed glasses (this costume and a PhD doesn’t always make a scientist IMO) is that it is likely such a material may be synthesizable – hey we may be able to cool flue gas and pass it through pipes filled with hairy or wooly stuff made of this compound. Puhlease you mitigation scientists, swallow pride and pass your mit research to an engineer for veting, costing and developing the idea to something potentially useful.
Oh, never leave your eggshells unbroken in the cup,
But think of us poor sailormen and always break them up!
For witches come and steal them and sail away to sea,
And make life a misery for mariners like me.
Why did the frog cross the road?
He was stapled to a chicken.
Why was he stapled to a chicken?
It was an experiment.
What kind of experiment?
A climate experiment.
What did they find out?
The results were inconclusive but initial indications are pointing to a direct correlation between global warming and a rising incidence of chickens crossing roads both with and without frogs stapled to them that is worse than we thought. The matter is urgent, the stakes high, funding for more study is needed immediately.
How much funding?
How much you got?
To study what?
We now know why the frog crossed the road, but we don’t know yet why the chicken crossed the road but one of the important clues is to determine which came first the chicken or the egg.
This will help solve global warming?
(short silence) Yes.
Odd, looked like you were going to burst out laughing for a moment.
I uhm… just had a frog in my throat.
OK. Here’s $4million.
(short silence) Unbelievable.
What? That your getting $4million to study chickens and eggs?
(short silence indicative of another “frog”) Uhm… no, just it can’t be done for $4million, we’ll need $8million. And PETA is all over use so we’ll need $20million for a new computer lab to simulate the chickens and the frogs so we don’t have to use real ones.
Won’t that call the results into question?
Well maybe, but we thought we could build a new building across the road and then the chicken would already be across the road even the simulated chicken and we could eliminate that from the equation. Say $100 million? Its urgent…
Jacob Neilson says: October 27, 2010 at 4:46 am
“why did the chicken cross the road”
Chickens, understanding that in a non-well mixed atsmosphere, the highest concentration of CO2 is close to the ground on busy highways, therefore an egg laid while crossing would significantly reduce fossil fuel combustion produced deadly CO2, the answer becomes:
To lay an egg.
Don’t eggs have a lot of sulfur in them? And when they rot we get hydrogen sulfide, or maybe when they get digested we get hydrogen sulfide. That’s noticeable pollution, or perhaps nosable pollution.
We need a better way to absorb CO2, (or adsorb, same sequestering result). I therefore recommend we go back to whitewashing our Stevenson screens, since whitewash, as we learned here (and didn’t learn from Tom Sawyer) cures by taking in CO2 from the atmosphere. And rather than painting our roofs white as Dr Chu suggests, we whitewash them. That would kill two (absorb CO2 and reflect radiation) birds (chickens) with one stone.
I love elegant solutions.
Wait a second.
Dinosaurs laid eggs.
BIG eggs. Sucked up a lot of CO2.
Then they died. Didn’t lay any more eggs. Stopped sucking up CO2.
For that matter, stopped putting OUT CO2, too.
Where’s Jurassic Park when you need it?
If you want really big eggs, don’t raise chickens, become an ostrich farmer. Feed a lot more people, too.
And think of the drumstick you could get at KFO (Kentucky Fried Ostrich).
Larry Chickola says:
October 26, 2010 at 9:31 am (Edit)
Sigh…..
Doesn’t anybody check to see if the numbers make any sense before they do a press release? Although the membrane properties of eggshells are probably very useful and interesting in many areas (health, medicine), it is ridiculous in the context of global warming.
Per the International Egg Commission (IEC), there are 4.9 billion egg laying hens in the world, maximum of 300 eggs per hen per year.,
Thank you. A credible, edible, analysis. 8<) Eggactly on target.