NACES 2015 Plant Design

Executive Summary
The plummet of fossil fuel price despite increment in energy demand indicates
a promising future for renewable energy. To tackle fossil fuel depletion crisis as well
as mitigate negative impacts towards environment caused by fossil fuels, alternative
biofuels from renewable resources have been a focus of intensive research. Our team
are aware that despite the rapid development in algae biofuel and vegetable biofuel,
the potential of poultry industry waste is always neglected. Currently, most of the
biodiesel production is achieved using vegetable oils as the chief starting material.
Nevertheless, the main pitfall in using plant oils as feedstock is that they are noneconomical and non-feasible due to the prohibitive cost and the fact that they compete
with the food market. At the same time, the endless appetite for poultry products
produced 11 billion pounds of poultry waste annually. Hence we proposed to utilize
animal based waste products (eg. chicken feather meal) to produce biodiesels, which
has an advantage of minimizing waste and reducing environmental pollution. Unlike
conventional biofuel sources such as corn, vegetable oil and sugar cane, it is not in
demand for human food. Besides, manufacturing cost for biodiesel from chicken
feather meal is around US$ 0.26 per liter (US$1 per gallon) for an average capacity
biofuel plant, making it more economic compared to soy biodiesel, for example corn
oil which costs US$ 1.85-2.11 per liter (US$ 7-8 per gallon). Chicken feather meal
has high lipid content of 11%wt (higher than other plants feedstock used like soybean,
coconut, sunflower and etc.) and can be extracted from feather meal through transesterification (schematic representation of biodiesel production from poultry waste is
as shown in Figure 1). By statistics, considering the feather meal produced from the
poultry each year, we could produce a huge sum of 593 million gallons across the
world.
Beside the biofuel extracted, our also explore the possibilities of the chicken
feather meal. Typically, extracted chicken feather meal can be further processed into a
higher-grade animal feed or a better nitrogen source for fertilizer applications. Recent
research shown that chicken feather meal contains stronger and more absorbent
keratin fiber than wood. Carbonized chicken feathers bears a resemblance to highly
versatile (and tiny) carbon nanotubes, which can be utilized to store hydrogen for
fuel-cell vehicles. Speaking of hydrogen, it has been considered as a clean and

NACES 2015 Plant Design

abundant energy alternative to fossil fuels for many years, only its low density causes
high cost for metal hydride storage. Carbonized chicken feather fibers (which
composed of keratin, which is a natural protein that forms strong, hollow tubes) holds
the potential of improving drastically existing methods of hydrogen storage and
would pave the way for the practical development of a truly hydrogen-based energy
economy. They can absorb more hydrogen than carbon nanotubes or metal hydrides.
Hence, our final product will be biofuel and hydrogen storage tank.
In conclusion, there is a huge scope for this idea to further grow up bringing
new trends and economical technologies by exploring the potential of poultry waste
biofuel, as well as providing cheap alternative for hydrogen fuel hold up, developing
two types of renewable energy simultaneously hence relieving the rely on fossil fuels.

Poultry Industry

Meat

Poultry Waste
(Chicken feathers, blood, offal and trims)

Hydrolyzed Product
I

Drying

Feather Meal
II

Biodiesel

Animal Food

i) Water Extraction
ii) Trans-esterification

High Protein Feather Meal

Figure 1: Schematic representation of biodiesel production from poultry waste