Use of Chicken Eggshells as Fillers in Flexible Polyurethane Foam Production

Abstract

Every year, chicken eggshell waste is on the increase due to the high demand of poultry produce across the globe. However, only a few percentage of this eggshell waste is used up in various industrial processes, with a larger percentage disposed inappropriately thereby increasing environmental pollution. With the ever increasing demand for flexible polyurethane foam, chicken eggshells were considered as an inexpensive alternative to commercial CaCO3 as fillers in polyurethane foam production in this research. Four samples of fillers containing 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% of chicken eggshells were blended with 95%, 90%, 85% and 80% of commercial CaCO3 and this was used to produce flexible polyurethane foams of 24kg/m3 density labelled S1, S2, S3 and S4 respectively. Results from the physicomechanical tests carried out on these samples revealed that S4 had promising properties than other samples as compared with a control sample (S0) made with 100% commercial CaCO3. S4 had a cream time and rise time value of 8 and 40 sec respectively which was found to be the same as S0. S4 had the lowest gel time of 54 sec, hence the lowest demoulding time, which is another positive development. Elongation at break point and % compression set values of S4 were found to be 26.02 and 6.25 respectively. This was a huge improvement when compared with S0 and the other samples. Hence, chicken eggshells can be confidently explored as fillers or as filler-blends in the production of flexible polyurethane foam.