Similar to Coal

Orig­i­nal­ly post­ed here: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/business/14238604.htm

Post­ed on Sat, Apr. 01, 2006
Char­lotte Observ­er (Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, USA)

THE SCOOP ON FUTURE POWER?
What these chick­ens drop could one day light up N.C. homes
Bruce Henderson

A Philadel­phia-based com­pa­ny may cap­i­tal­ize on North Carolina’s
boun­ty of poul­try poop for one of the nation’s first chicken-powered
elec­tric plants.

The state’s top two broil­er-pro­duc­ing coun­ties, Wilkes and Union, are
among a num­ber of loca­tions Fibrowatt LLC is explor­ing for one or
more $100 mil­lion plants. The com­pa­ny is already build­ing a Minnesota
plant to be fired by turkey lit­ter — manure and bed­ding — and is
devel­op­ing projects in Mary­land and Mississippi.

“It’s not a well-known tech­nique to the gen­er­al pub­lic, and even to
the indus­try,” said Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Carl Strick­ler. “It’s
pret­ty unique not only in the Unit­ed States but quite hon­est­ly worldwide.”

Poul­try lit­ter is part of North Car­oli­na’s wealth of bio­mass, the
term for plant and ani­mal left­overs such as wood scraps and manure.
Enough of the stuff comes out of farms and forests to equal the
poten­tial pow­er gen­er­at­ed by a nuclear pow­er reac­tor, state energy
offi­cials estimate.

For years, lit­ter has been strewn on farm fields as cheap fertilizer.
“It’s turned broom sedge and weeds in Wilkes Coun­ty into lush
pas­tures,” said Kathy Bun­ton, the state poul­try agent for that
foothills region.

But as chick­en grow­ers clus­ter in coun­ties near pro­cess­ing plants,
the land has tak­en all the nutri­ents it can absorb. That’s where
Fibrowatt hopes to step in.

“We don’t elim­i­nate the prac­tice of land appli­ca­tion,” Strickler
said. “We just take out the excess.”

The plants Fibrowatt is devel­op­ing gen­er­ate 30 to 55 megawatts,
enough to pow­er some 50,000 homes.

Duke Pow­er’s River­bend coal pow­er sta­tion west of Char­lotte generates
454 megawatts. And it is in the ear­ly stages of plan­ning a new
nuclear plant in South Car­oli­na that would gen­er­ate 2,234 megawatts.

More than a half-dozen N.C. coun­ties have expressed inter­est in the
plant, Strick­ler said. Among them: Wilkes, Sur­ry and Alexander
coun­ties, in the north­west N.C. foothills, and Union.

“We hope they have an inter­est in Union Coun­ty,” said Mau­rice Ewing,
pres­i­dent and CEO of the Union Coun­ty Part­ner­ship for Progress. He
referred oth­er ques­tions to Fibrowatt.

Said Don Alexan­der, the Wilkes Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Corp. director:
“If Fibrowatt comes … we’ve all won.”

A stand­ing-room crowd, many sport­ing yel­low caps from chicken
pro­duc­er Tyson Foods, which has a Wilkes Coun­ty pro­cess­ing plant,
debat­ed the plan at a pub­lic meet­ing in North Wilkes­boro last week.

“I just think this is a won­der­ful way to make sure the poultry
indus­try stays viable,” Bun­ton said. “I don’t see the downside.”

But some envi­ron­men­tal groups do.

“The last thing we need to do with a valu­able resource such as
poul­try lit­ter is burn it and cre­ate air pol­lu­tion,” said Janet
Zeller of the Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League.

State offi­cials should wait until the Min­neso­ta plant is oper­at­ing to
learn more about emis­sions, she said.

Emis­sions would be sim­i­lar to those of reg­u­lar coal-fired power
plants, said Gary Saun­ders, an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer in the N.C.
Divi­sion of Air Qual­i­ty. Chick­en lit­ter would pro­duce less sulfur
diox­ide, which con­tributes to hazy skies and acidic streams.

Com­bus­tion of any sort also pro­duces small amounts of chemicals
called diox­ins, some of which may cause cancer.

Strick­ler said emis­sions would be min­i­mal. “If you think about it,”
he said, “our fuel is what went through a chick­en or turkey, so it’s
a fair­ly clean fuel.”

And the smell? Min­i­mal, Strick­ler says, due to the company’s
pre­ven­tive measures.

Wilkes Coun­ty area offi­cials have vis­it­ed Fibrowat­t’s Minnesota
plant. A del­e­ga­tion plans to vis­it poul­try-pow­ered plants in the
Unit­ed King­dom that are run by a Fibrowatt partner.

“Wilkes is like any­where else — we hope it lands here,” said
Alexan­der, the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment chief. “This is like PIMBY:
Please In My Backyard.”

Pow­er­ful Producers

As the nation’s third-largest poul­try pro­duc­er, North Carolina’s
farms pro­duce more than wings and thighs. Chick­ens pro­duce about a
ton of manure and pine shav­ings for every 1,000 birds — about 84,000
tons a year for Union Coun­ty alone.

Bruce Hen­der­son: (704) 358‑5051.