In 2020, Delmarva poultry breeders raised 570 million birds, and the poultry factory processed 4.2 billion pounds of poultry, valued at US$3.4 billion.
As government officials and farmers seek effective ways to dispose of waste and protect the environment, disposing of waste from the industry has been an ongoing problem.
Most waste-manure or garbage from poultry houses and DAF from processing plants-is used as fertilizer for farmland or applied to the land through spray irrigation systems.
DAF or dissolved air flotation is the final liquefaction product of wastewater treatment in poultry processing plants.
Now, the entire region is vigorously developing poultry waste recycling plants. Who knew that part of the solution would be microbes?
One of the international leaders in advancing this development, Bioenergy Devco, headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, plans to build a composting facility along Route 13A in Southford at a cost of US$35-40 million. Recycling plant.
Currently, this plant-purchased by the company from Perdue Farms a year ago-produces compost from the waste of the poultry processing plant.
According to the new plan, waste mainly from the Perdue plant will be recycled into compost and natural gas.
The company has filed a conditional use application to amend four other conditional use permits for the project over the past three decades, which aims to use anaerobic digestion technology to convert waste from poultry processing plants into natural gas and compost.
“We have lived here for 30 years and we want to be an important part of the community,” said Peter Ettinger, Chief Development Officer of Bioenergy Devco. “We need to find an environmentally friendly way to manage these materials.”
After the first public hearing at the Sussex County Planning and Zoning Committee on February 11, the committee members postponed the vote for further consideration.
The Sussex County Council will hold a public hearing at the Carter Cooperative Center at Delaware Technical Community College in Georgetown at 10 am on March 16th (Tuesday).
In current composting operations, poultry processing waste is mixed with wood chips in large mixing equipment. From there, the materials are piled in large shelters, covered and their temperature is monitored.
Plant manager Jeff Deats stated that keeping the temperature around 160 degrees is critical to the process, which also includes constant ventilation. He said that it is the combination of oxygen and heat that breaks down the material into usable compost.
After being placed in the fort pile for about 30 days, the material will move to another area, where it will be rotated and mixed, and placed for another 30 days.
The final stage is a screening operation, in which any wood larger than three-eighths of an inch is removed. Dieters said those wood chips are then reused in the mixing process.
The final compost has been broken down into small soil-like materials, and then moved to a large pile again, where it is subjected to the nutrient content test required by DNREC.
In general, Dieters said, it may take up to four to five months for compost to be ready for sale.
Compost is sold to companies that mix it with other soil amendments, bag them, and sell them commercially.
The biggest change in the current operation is the addition of four anaerobic digesters in the process.
The anaerobic process begins by trucking the waste from the treatment plant to the receiving building, which is enclosed under negative pressure to capture odors. The air from the receiving building is captured and filtered.
The waste is pumped into a storage tank and then into one of four digesters. The materials are heated and mixed continuously for about 30 days. Microorganisms decompose substances, called digests.
The liquid can be used as a soil conditioner to improve farmland soil. However, because the facility has an existing composting market, centrifuges will be used to remove excess water from the digestive juice and transfer the remaining solid materials to the composting facility. There will be processed into organic compost together with wood waste.
Microbes release biogas, which is a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. The gas will be captured and scrubbed as part of the factory process.
Chesapeake Utilities will take the biogas off the site, purify it into renewable natural gas, and inject it into the company’s natural gas pipeline.
Although the proposed factory will not dispose of waste from poultry houses, another factory in Sussex has been approved to recycle the waste.
CleanBay Renewable Energy will build a US$60 million factory on a piece of land off Highway 113 south of Georgetown to recover up to 90,000 tons of waste from poultry houses. The plant will convert waste into electricity and fertilizer.
Post time: Mar-18-2021