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Project hopes to turn poultry manure into electric energy
Written by Carol Vaughn
Staff Writer
MELFA -- Nearly $1 million is headed to the Eastern Shore of Virginia for a pilot project to convert chicken manure into electricity on a Melfa farm.
The project, based at Davis Lovell's 11-house broiler operation, will research and demonstrate the potential to use tons of poultry litter produced on Delmarva farms as an alternative energy source to generate electricity while reducing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay from nutrients in chicken manure, which traditionally has been spread on fields as fertilizer.
"The overall idea is, you've got this source of chicken litter -- what could it be used for? One idea was to combust it and use it to generate electricity," said P. G. Ross, chairman of the Eastern Shore Resource Conservation and Development Council, the grant recipient.
Additionally, the project explores the potential to use the phosphorus-rich byproduct of the process as a fertilizer source that could be transported outside the bay watershed or used on crops locally.
Its use could reduce the amount of higher-priced inorganic fertilizer farmers need to import into the region.
Shore tomato farmers alone import more than 450 tons of inorganic triple superphosphate to fertilize about 6,000 acres of tomatoes valued at $100 million a year, according to information in the grant proposal.
Funding for the litter-to-electricity project includes a $421,650 Conservation Innovation Grant awarded to the RC&D Council by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service. Another $210,000 will come from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, along with $301,000 in equipment and other contributions from Farm Pilot Project Coordination Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based non-profit that oversees administration of projects to show the economic viability of technologies that reduce nutrients in manure from commercial animal farming operations.
Construction is scheduled to begin next spring of a system including a gasifier and generator capable of converting 2,200 tons per year of poultry litter into energy to power farm operations with 438 megawatts of electricity.
Data will be collected throughout the three-year project on the system's performance and operational costs.
The broiler chicken industry is one of Accomack County's largest farm sectors, generating sales of nearly $90 million a year. The county has 250 to 300 chicken houses producing more than 40 million broilers per year, along with about 50,000 tons of litter, according to the grant proposal.
Source: http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20110908/NEWS01/109080357
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