Facile Development of Nano Size Calcium Hydroxyapatite Based Ceramic from Eggshells: Synthesis and Characterization

Agriculture is encouraged throughout the world for sufficient production of food and agro allied raw materials. However, a lot of solid wastes are generated which required added value so that their handling will not become impediments to agricultural production itself. One of such waste is egg shell, which can be transformed into hydroxyapatite with immense use in biological, environmental, tissue engineering and biological applications. In this study hydroxyapatite (HAp) was successfully synthesized from recycled uncalcined eggshells waste via wet chemical precipitation method. The microstructure of the developed HAp was characterized by X-ray diffraction, energy dispersed spectroscopy, transmission electron microscope and Fourier infrared spectroscopy. The presence of trace elements such as K, Mg and Fe were detected by EDAX measurement. The as prepared and calcinated products consist of B-type carbonated HAp nano-rods with Ca/P molar ratio was estimated to be 1.95 and can be a potential candidate for biomedical applications. Thus, agricultural waste of eggshells is veritable source materials for the production of important biomaterial such as hydroxyapatite.