Ecuadorean student finds shrimp shells clean tannery effluent
25/10/2018
María Fernanda Morales, a student of environmental engineering at the University of the Americas (UDLA) in Quito worked with a tannery in Ambato to examine the effect on its wastewater of filtering using waste from the food industry. Specifically, she took discarded seafood shells, washed them thoroughly, ground them up into flakes and used the material as a filter for tannery effluent.
Ms Morales placed the shells inside her own arrangement of plastic tubes, through which she ran the effluent. Over the course of four hours, she found that residues of metals and toxins were absorbed by the shells, leaving the water clear.
The shells are a cheap, abundant, renewable resource. From shrimp alone, Ecuador is estimated to generate at least 3 tonnes of shells per year and shrimp production there grew by more than 16% in 2017. María Fernanda Morales’s research suggests that a substance in the shrimp shell, a polymer called chitin, is particularly efficient in purifying liquid.
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