A Study into the effects of the milling time on the Physiochemical and Morphological Characteristics of Cow Bone Powder (CBP)

Cow bone has been regarded as bio-waste and environmental pollutant, nevertheless, many researchers have developed ways to utilize this biomaterial and make it environmental friendly especially in the areas of reinforcement, activated carbon, filler, additive as well as water purification. It has also been established in the recent time that performance, efficiency and effective utilization of CBP depend solely on whether is in the form of nano-, micro-, and macro- particles(Oladele, I, 2016). The bone of the cow head (Skull) was collected from the abattoir, washed and cleaned from meat, sun-dried for 6 weeks and washed again with de-ionized water to remove impurities and contaminants, it was then transferred to the oven set at 50 °C to dry for 5 hours before crushing, it was then crushed and pulverised. The pulverized powder then dried in an electric oven set at 50° C for a week to ensure total dryness and sieved according to ASTM standard using 150 μm size. In this study, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX), X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) have been employed to characterize the powder at different milling time varying from 0, 20, 40 and 60 Mins. Digital Vibratory Disc Milling Machine (VDMM) rated 380V/50Hz at 940 rpm was used for the milling. The SEM Images was set to 1.00kx at 50 μμm, 2.00x at 20 μm and 5.00kx at 10 μm. The particles size got reduced from 150 μm to average diameter of 300 nm. It was established in the study that the duration of the milling affects volume, surface area, particle size, pore size distributions, microstructure and some other mechanical properties as well as the morphology of the powder.