Poultry litter used to generate power as public anger grows

Eddie Wilkinson, Melton Renewable Energy CEO, said across the company’s sites about 750,000 megawatt hours per year are generated, which could power up to 250,000 homes each year. If the company wasn’t using biomass, it would have to use a gas turbine. The carbon footprint of a gas turbine is about 400 g of carbon per kw hour compared to 120 g for biomass.

“We’re not zero carbon but we are low carbon. The other benefit to us is that our fuel is effectively land neutral. We’re not chopping down trees; it’s coming from agricultural waste from residues – we’re taking what is a problem to the industry and agriculture generally and turning it into something positive,” he told BBC Farming Today.

Poultry litter is a major concern because spreading it on land as a fertiliser can cause pollution due to run-off and the impact on waterways and rivers.

Wilkinson: “The next step would be to capture the carbon so that we don’t put anything up the stack. That is an expensive process and one that we are thinking about investigating currently.”

Richard Bloomfield, Melton plant manager, said about a tonne a minute goes into the boiler, generating heat which turns the water into steam that feeds into the turbine.

A useful byproduct

The company also produces a byproduct from the system with the waste from the process going back to the farmers to be used as fertiliser: “The process takes nitrogen out, which is a real problem for the watercourses. Our combustion process uses that in the process so what we end up with is a P and K fertiliser,” he added.

The solution is one that might help the industry in the wake of increasing public anger over the pollution of UK waterways. In a new report published in March, the Soil Association said rivers in at least 7 counties across Britain were at risk of becoming dead zones depleted of wildlife if UK governments didn’t ban factory broiler farms. Its report, ‘Stop Killing our Rivers’, looked at the escalating number of permits for poultry farms in England and Wales.

UK-wide ban on intensive poultry units

It found units are concentrated in 10 other river catchments in Norfolk, Shropshire, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Herefordshire and Powys. It has launched a petition calling for a UK-wide ban on new intensive poultry units.

Rob Percival, Soil Association head of food policy: “Few people realise that industrial chicken production might be the most ethically bankrupt and environmentally destructive business in the UK. It’s the scale and intensity of production that’s the issue – most people would be shocked to learn that poultry populations have been growing at a rate of 1 million birds every month for the past 10 years.

“The system needs to be completely reformed. Farmers operating these units are often doing so out of financial necessity and need a viable alternative. Urgent government action is needed. The poultry industry is like a runaway train – if we don’t act now to put the brakes on industrial production, we’ll see more of our rivers becoming dead zones and facing the same desperate fate as the River Wye.”