Egg Whites Could be the Key to Cleaning Our Oceans
A new study found that the breakfast staple can effectively filter microplastics from water.
In hopes of finding a cheap, easy way to come by material to filter microplastics out of ocean water, scientists recently discovered potential in an unlikely source—egg whites.
In the new study by Princeton Engineering, researchers manipulated the egg whites in the lab, transforming the eggs from breakfast staple to a water-filtration mechanism that can remove both salt and microplastics from seawater with around 98 percent efficiency.
With somewhere around 14 million tons of microplastics on the ocean floor alone, the need for effective ways to filter out the plastics is ever increasing.
The final structure of the egg whites after they are altered in the lab is called an “aerogel”— a substance that is “lightweight and porous” and “can be used in many types of applications, including water filtration, energy storage and sound and thermal insulation,” according to the study.
In the search for just the right substance to create the aerogel, egg whites weren’t the original food focus of researchers.
Instead, Craig Arnold, co author of the study, along with engineering professors at Princeton University, was taking a hard look at his lunch one day and thought the bread holding together his sandwich may be just the right structure for what they were looking for. The lab went to work, testing out different bread recipes in hopes of creating a substance that could effectively filter microplastics out of water.
Arnold, who specializes in creating materials for engineering applications, told phys.org that the journey to find the right structure involved a lot of whittling down of ingredients until they were left with just one.
“We started with a more complex system,” Arnold said, “and we just kept reducing, reducing, reducing until we got down to the core of what it was. It was the proteins in the egg whites that were leading to the structures that we needed.”
To transform the egg whites from food to an effective water-filtration system, researchers freeze dry the egg whites and then heat them upwards of 900 degrees Celsius in an oxygen-free environment. Thanks to the protein in the egg whites, this process results in a change in the egg whites’ texture, morphing them into a “structure of interconnected strands of carbon fibers and sheets of graphene,” according to the study.
Not wanting to compete with the food system’s supply of eggs, researchers note that other proteins put through the same process could also work as water filters. This way, scientists would be able to create the filtering materials at low costs and high quantities without ruining anyone’s breakfast plate.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].Egg Whites Could be the Key to Cleaning Our Oceans
by Shea Swenson, Modern Farmer
November 15, 2022
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Finally, a good use for “spoiled” eggs!
Perhaps male fertilized eggs could also be used? I believe they’re currently destroyed, since only hens are generally wanted for meat or, obviously, laying hens.
Egg whites are used to filter stock to make consommé. True it’s a different heat level
This principle of using high temp cured egg proteins for their intricate cell structure is similar to using biochar made from cellulose.