China’s First Chicken Waste-Biogas Plant Turns Manure Into Electricity and Heat
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 08. 8.08
Let’s remember that on a chicken farm containing 3 million birds, they probably never are let outside. Photo by Tim via flickr.
We recently heard about a report which estimates that 3% of US electrical demand could be met though utilizing cow manure to generate electricity. While for me it’s a bit of cold comfort to know that a byproduct of industrial agriculture could generate renewable electricity, at least a waste product is being put to better use. Along those lines, an industrial-scale chicken farm (3 million chickens!) in China has recently installed the nation’s first chicken manure-biogas plant.
Chicken Manure to Provide Electricity and Heat
The Beijing Deqingyuan Chicken Farm Waste Utilization plant, located about 50 kilometers north of Beijing will utilize the 220 tons of manure the farm’s chickens produce every day to generate energy. The waste will be fed into an anaerobic digester to produce biogas, which will fuel two GE Jenbacher gas engines.
This system will produce 14,600 MWh of electricity a year, as well as providing heat for the farm. It is expected to reduce the farm’s carbon emissions by 95,000 tons annually, as well as saving them $1.2 million in electricity costs.
In addition to providing heat and electricity to the farm, the project is hoped to reduce electric shortages in the region as a whole.
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Industrial scale manure-to-energy seems like a really good idea, as long as we're making the waste anyway. Moreover, the energy in manure is stored. Maybe years from now feces will replace oil and natural gas as peaking plants, and reduce the need to store renewably produced energy.
Granny Miller just put out an article today about sustainable chicken farming costs. It's quite a bit more to buy a chicken that isn't raised in a cage and fed hormones till it pops in six weeks as opposed to small scale farming.
Check it out: http://grannymillerblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/meat-chicken-check.html
OK, but how are we going to convince all US livestock farmers to invest in biogas generation? The best way to do it is to give them big, generous tax incentives. Tax credits for the investment, and make the technology sales tax free. If the farmers produce enough gas to sell, their profits on such green energy should be 100% tax free too. GreenEnergyTaxCuts.com makes the case for this policy approach.
America should seriously take the cue from China and utilize this energy source. There are industrial farming areas that are barely inhabitable because of the air and land pollution caused by the obscene amounts of animal waste. It even makes the animals sick.
While I'm all for a few private tax cuts here and there for small business types, I hardly think industrial sized farms need MORE tax incentives. That's basically offering free money to them to MAKE money. I say regulate the people doing the most harm into fair practice (i.e. the same methods that green farmers have to use) and we'll see the problem go away quite quickly. It's also a lot of tax money that we don't have.
Frankly, I find it hard to take anyone serious who doesn't see the folly of claiming to care for the environment and is not a vegetarian.
It's like watching someone praise the environmental benefits of not revving up the hummer while stopped at redlights.
This is a completely unsustainable use of chicken manure. The thing you should be doing with chicken manure is composting it and using it to grow crops.
Both world and US rock phosphate mining has been at a plateau for the last 20 years. We've been on the downside slope for years. When that runs too low, bye-bye industrial farming (and you thought peak oil was going to do them in). Phosphate is a key ingredient in plants (the P in N-P-K fertilizer). Without it they don't grow.
We need to be recycling our chicken manure into organic agriculture, not burning it.
It's not just chicken manure we should be composting
Anything from 30-50% of household refuse is organic material i.e. green (garden) waste and food waste. Tonnes of food are tossed away from commercial kitchens.
We should be composting it (properly not using contaminating AWT systems) and getting it back on to the land.
It replaces chemical fertiliser, it is better for the soil and it saves water.
It's not just chicken manure we should be composting
Anything from 30-50% of household refuse is organic material i.e. green (garden) waste and food waste. Tonnes of food are tossed away from commercial kitchens.
We should be composting it (properly not using contaminating AWT systems) and getting it back on to the land.
It replaces chemical fertiliser, it is better for the soil and it saves water.
JSDreyer ~
would producing biogas from the manure remove the phosphate from it? I think not.
Following the anaerobic digestion and tapping of the biogas, there will still be residual solids in the digester. And these solids are readily compostable.
Having ones cake and eating it too?