New Plan Seeks to Turn Chicken Manure to Energy
by Timothy B. Wheeler (Baltimore Sun) A New Hampshire-based company has teamed with poultry giant Perdue to propose a $200 million plant on the Eastern Shore to extract energy from chicken manure, offering its plan as a viable remedy for the farm pollution fouling the Chesapeake Bay.
Officials with AgEnergyUSA met in Annapolis last week with lawmakers, state officials, environmentalists and farmers, seeking support and legislation worth tens of millions of dollars for their project.
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The company’s other partner is EDF Renewable Energy, an arm of the French power company.
The push for the new manure-to-energy project came as the Hogan administration and leading Democrats settled their differences over regulations to curb farmers’ use of polluting poultry waste to fertilize their crops. Environmentalists had long pushed for strict limits to keep the manure from washing off fields into the bay. But farmers resisted, arguing that the costs of disposing of the manure and buying other fertilizer would drive them out of business.
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This time, Potter’s (James Potter, AgEnergyUSA’s president) company wants to build an “anaerobic digestion” plant near Salisbury that could handle up to 200,000 tons of chicken litter a year — close to what officials estimate is the excess amount being spread on the Shore each year. Environmentalists like this process better than burning manure, which they contend raises risks of air pollution.
The plant would use bacteria to extract methane-rich bio-gas for industrial use. The residue would be processed so that the bay-fouling nutrients in chicken waste could be separated and used in a more environmentally friendly manner. The nitrogen could be sold back to farmers as liquid fertilizer, which crops need every year, while the problematic phosphorus that’s built up in Shore soils could be shipped elsewhere and sold as peat moss, Potter explained. READ MORE and MORE (PublicRadioEast)
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