Poultry Waste Gasification - Part 2

Last year I found the article, “Could Chicken Manure Help Curb Climate Change” in the USA Today paper; it was written by Brian Winter, and there is a link below. It’s an interesting case study of a farm-scale application, which may serve as the proof of concept for larger scale, industrial plants. The graphic accompanying this post was part of the article.


This is part two of the gasification posts, following up on last Friday’s which is here: http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2011/03/poultry-waste-gasification-part-1.html

Essentially, the graphic is an overview of the gasification process, where manure is feed into a gasifier and heated to high temperature, producing gas that can be used as fuel for other purposes – heating chicken houses in this case – and also producing biochar, the as product that can be used as fertilizer.

The article highlights the process’s advantages in reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas that is attributed to rising temperatures, reduced visibility, and other pollution-related impacts.

A feature of the gasification heating is a low oxygen approach – the article says that this means no smoke or odor from this stage of the process. This is the advantage gasification seems to offer over burning/incinerating processes such as the one used in Fibrowatt plants. However, while the process has a low impact in smaller-scale applications, there is still the problem of logistics – hauling the waste material to the plant – in the larger scale applications that might be proposed.

The USA Today article can be found here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2010-02-10-cheap-carbon_N.htm