A Chickenshit Solution to Bay Pollution?

Waste combustion system targets poultry litter

Morgan State University professor and lab director for the School of Engineering's industrial and systems engineering department Dr. Seong W. Lee and his research team are the recipients of a $100,000 Phase 1 award from the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) to transition his CycloBurn Combustion System from prototype to commercialization. The system uses a proprietary methodology to produce energy from waste biomass, particularly poultry litter while protecting the environment.

For businesses involved in the U.S. poultry industry, a number of which operate along the Chesapeake Bay in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, the CycloBurn Combustion System may provide a cost effective solution to disposing of 100% of produced poultry wastes by repurposing it to produce energy.

The efficiency of the combustion process will not only reduce capital and operating costs associated with heating barns or providing electricity for facilities, but it also will dramatically decrease the levels of air pollution and eutrophication (e.g., high nitrogen, phosphorus) potentially going into the nation’s largest estuary system, the university said. Most farms use this waste for fertilizer or landfills, which may cause aquatic life-killing nutrients to enter the watershed.

Currently, most of the chickenshit is used as high nitrogen, high phosphorus fertilizer on agricultural land that drains into the bay. Burning the waste will require the nitrogen in it to be reduced to N2 , and leave the phosphorus behind in the ash to be landfilled, or used as fertilizer elsewhere.

I think we're still a ways from this being a viable means of power production, unless it's heavily subsidized.