MN poultry power plantPower plants that burn chicken droppings and turkey leftovers are sure to be welcome in areas like Maryland’s Eastern Shore and North Carolina where disposal of poultry waste is either a foul smelling procedure, when it is "land spread," or an expensive one when the company needs to truck it away. Plans are underway in both these regions for new biomass power plants that will burn the poultry waste while creating usable byproducts and no extra carbon emissions to add to Global Warming…

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Construction is underway on the first U.S. poultry litter-fueled power plant in Benson, Minnesota. The plant will create clean power for 55,000 homes while burning 700,000 tons of dung each year. An added bonus, the process will keep phosphorus and nitrates found in the raw litter from seeping into water supplies. Due to be completed in June 2007, the developers, Fibrowatt LLC, and its offshoot, Fibominn, say it will be the largest of its kind in the world.

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where the Chesapeake Bay is choking on the runoff from phosphorus and nitrates, the poultry-fueled power plant being developed by FibroShore will provide welcome relief for the bay as well as residents concerned about seepage of pollutants into drinking water.

Three poultry litter plants have already been built in England and supply power to 160,000 homes. Over the last twelve years, the parent company, Fibrowatt Ltd., has

  • combusted more than 6.2 million tons of poultry litter and other biomass,
  • generated over 3.8 million megawatt-hours (or 3.8TWh) of electricity, and
  • produced and marketed 510,000 tons of ash fertilizer.

Fibrowatt LLC has a pipeline of new projects under development in poultry-growing states across the USA. Three locales in North Carolina are vying for a plant as well as locations in Central Mississippi. (Free Republic has Reuters report on MN plant)

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2 COMMENTS

  2. UPDATE from GNN
    An alert reader at Care2 Network did some extensive Google searching and found some information that disputes the claims of the Reuters article that claims this kind of incineration doesn’t add to global warming, is a clean-burning fuel.

    Here are the two links which cause me substantial concern:

    http://www.bredl.org/pdf/Fibrowatt_Factsheet2006.pdf
    http://www.energyjustice.net/fibrowatch/

    As a bird watcher, wind power also concerns me.

    What seems to have NO down sides are solar power and thermal depolymerization… I will be doing an update on this fantastic power source/recycling opportunity soon, but see the 2003 story from GNN now:
    https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/content/view/628/224/

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