Porous immobilization support prepared from animal bone

Abstract

Porous immobilization support materials for use in physical and chemical processes are produced from bird, animal or fish bone by cleaning finely divided bone to remove all external tissue and by dissolving away all internal tissue from internal pores and internal Haversian canals of the bone to result in cleaned bone containing not more than 0.5% by weight of remaining lipid material, preferably containing only trace amounts, i.e. less than 0.1% by weight. The cleaned bone consists of porous finely-divided animal bone containing a collagenous matrix of organic fibrous connective tissue material including osein having uniformaly distributed therethrough mineral hydroxyapatite. The collagenous matrix provides an ideal distributed site for the chemical attachment of bacteria, cells and enzyme catalysts. The attachment may be by absorption, or by charge attraction, or with a cross-linking agent attachable between the bone and the supported material. An economical source of bone is a boney fraction from mechanical separation of meat and bone such as in recovering meat from chicken necks and backs unwanted by the chicken fast food industry. Chicken bone is more porous than other animal bone and is particularly suitable for immobilization.

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