Chicken Manure to Power 90,000 Homes in the Netherlands!

Posted by Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on September 9, 2008 at 10:34 pm


Talk about a renewable energy source! Dutch agriculture minister Gerda Verburg unveiled a biomass power plant run exclusively on poultry manure, with a capacity of 36.5 megawatts.

Situated in Moerdijk, the 150 million euro plant was constructed by the Dutch multi-utility company Delta. It will convert roughly 440,000 tons of chicken manure into energy annually, generating more than 270 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The plant also addresses a key environmental problem in the Netherlands: “managing the vast excess stream of chicken manure, which, until today, had to be processed at a high cost”.

Delta’s biomass plant has even been described as being carbon neutral, since it will prevent the manure from sitting in fields and seething greenhouse gases into the air. Once methane from the poultry waste has been extracted and ignited, the left over ash will be used to make fertilizers and other agricultural products.

This plan kills two birds with one stone, so to speak, solving the energy problem AND a waste disposal problem. Link -via Digg


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13 comments to "Chicken Manure to Power 90,000 Homes in the Netherlands!"

  1. Christophe
    September 9th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    Nice for the neighbours.
    NIMBY!

  2. Stratoblogster
    September 10th, 2008 at 12:58 am

    Does this mean no more chicken mcnuggets???

  3. K!P
    September 10th, 2008 at 1:47 am

    it means more chicken mcnuggets, they burn the poop, not the chicken :)

  4. Tim Giachetti
    September 10th, 2008 at 4:55 am

    In the words of Adam Stanhope: "I call chicken shit on this article!"
    :P

  5. Matt
    September 10th, 2008 at 11:28 am

    "NIMBY!"?
    They don't just burn it in a pile. If it's anything like the Swiss Kompogas plants, there's sophisticated smell control to prevent complaints, and the burning is done in an efficient furnace of some kind.

  6. sw
    September 10th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    i like the idea of manure 'seething' in a field

  7. CheeseDuck
    September 10th, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    Can we convert human waste to energy? ;)

  8. Melissa
    September 10th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    Cool! I live in Arkansas, where chickens are one of the biggest, if not the biggest products in our state. We grow unreal numbers of chickens,so we may be sitting on a goldmine of chicken waste. Most of time, chicken waste, or "chicken litter" as it's called here, is used as fertilizer for fields, primarily hay pastures. But I'm sure there's a lot more of it than is needed for fertilizer.

  9. zazie
    September 10th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    that's like 'the good life' the sitcom :) cool.

  10. Darkwish
    September 11th, 2008 at 9:04 am

    Now if they could find a way to harness all the BS from the politicians around the world, we'd never have to worry about energy again!

  11. Jessica
    September 11th, 2008 at 11:43 pm

    They are building one of these plants in Surry County, North Carolina! It was in the local newspaper - The Mount Airy News (mtairynews.com) a few months ago. We have lots of chicken farms in this area. I live in Mount Airy, which is in Surry County.

  12. GoGoGadgetScott
    September 28th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    There is a larger site currently operating in US. It is 55mw. Three copies are to be built in NC and up to 12 in the country.
    http://www.fibrowattusa.com/us-projects.cfm?id=16

  13. babytiger09
    February 15th, 2009 at 1:56 pm

    I have to give a class presentation on how chicken manure generates electricity. Does anyone know a simple example that could be performed in a class room or lab? thanks!


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