How to turn chicken waste to clean energy.

How to turn chicken waste to clean energy. For years, poultry farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have trucked manure to fields where it is used as a fertilizer. But a great concentration of animals means excess nutrient runoff that goes into streams and rivers and eventually ends up in the Chesapeake Bay. These nutrients increase the growth of algae and deplete oxygen that disrupts the aquatic ecosystem, making it difficult for marine life to survive.

 In an effort to reduce the nutrient load that drains from a 64,000-mile area into the Chesapeake Bay, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandates an annual cap restricting the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that can enter each tributary. And many states are challenged to stay beneath the cap. Here’s how Bühler Aeroglide supported a project that reduces the nutrient load by refining chicken manure into valuable products at the same time.

To address nutrient load, one of Pennsylvania’s largest egg production businesses partnered with EnergyWorks North America in Annapolis, MD. The result is a bioenergy program that uses gasification technology to transform egg layer manure into renewable energy and mineral byproducts, processing manure produced by five million layer hens. 

A Bühler Aeroglide high performance conveyor dryer is a key part of the process, used to reduce the moisture content of the manure prior to its gasification.