Waste energy – A chicken waste-to-energy project is gaining attention.

May 25, 2009

Waste energy
A chicken waste-to-energy project is gaining attention.
By SANDHYA SOMASHEKHAR

DO NOT try to tell Oren Heatwole that chicken poop smells. “Total myth,” he said before a colleague, eager to prove the point, scooped up a mulchy handful and inhaled deeply.

Heatwole, a former chicken farmer, might be biased. But he isn’t the only fan of the stuff. Scientists at Virginia Tech are experimenting with technology that would convert what you might call an abundant resource here in the Shenandoah Valley into energy.

Virginia Tech has built a prototype chicken-waste-to-energy machine. Using a process called pyrolysis, the device super-heats the droppings to transform them into three products: an oil that can be used for heating, a slowrelease fertiliser and a gas that the researchers hope will one day be recycled to power the machine.

If successful, the project also will help reduce a source of pollution in Chesapeake Bay. Although the raw waste has long been recognised as a top-flotch fertiliser, if applied too heavily, it can flush into waterways and eventually the bay. That has led to severe restrictions on its use.

It will be at least two years before the technology is perfected and the unit – now built for about US$1 rail (RM3.6mil) – is affordable for the average poultry farmer, said Foster Agblevor, the Virginia Tech professor in charge of the project.

Environmental groups have been largely critical of efforts to generate energy from waste products such as garbage or droppings. Often such plants produce harmful emissions. In addition, critics note that raw poultry waste already brings in top dollar as a fertiliser – more, some-times, than the energy it can produce.

“It does not make sense to try to solve a waste problem as an energy solution,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the non-profit Chesapeake Climate Action Network in Maryland. “It is an unproven technology that is going to serve only to delay and confuse the real solutions in Virginia, which are energy efficiency and true renewable energy like wind and solar.”- LAT-WP

Converting Chicken Waste to Power

Scientists at Virgina Tech are developing technology to convert chicken waste to energy. In this process, chicken litter – a mixture of manure, feathers, bedding and fee – is super-heated by a portable machine. The heat breaks down the mixture and yields oil for heating, fertiliser and non-combustible gas.