Muskuilu-maskorren hauskortasuna urratzaile gisa

Abstract

The spread of raft-farming of mussels in river estuaries around the world produces millions of tons of shell waste which mainly ends up in landfills. In addition, the United Nations and the European Union promote the sustainable development goals (SDG) for sustainable food production, requiring adequate waste management to analyse the life cycle and reuse of goods and materials. This work proposes to use mussels shells by-products created by the canning industry as abrasive in the sandblasting process. One of the main characteristics of abrasive grains is the friability, which determines the behaviour of the abrasive in the sandblasting process. Shells need to be prepared before using in sandblasting, a conditioning that involves the cleaning, grinding and sieving of shells. The purpose of this work is to examine the friability of mussel shells from two points of view, the effect of the cleaning process and a comparison with a common abrasive material (garnet). The characterization of the friability of mussel shells allows to foresee and define adequate applications according to their behaviour as abrasive. It is noticeable on the results that garnet is four times more friable than shells. This interesting feature enlarges the life of sand in close cycles and foresees a promising future to the new application.