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Turkey dung to be used as fuel
Under construction in Benson, Minnesota (US) is an
energy-producing plant that will burn turkey "litter"--a mix of dung and the
wood chips used as bedding material for the birds.
The plant could create enough electricity to power
60,000 homes in
Benson. The
soon-to-be opened 55-megawatt power plant, the first large-scale facility of its
kind in the United States, will use about 2,200 tons of litter per
day collected from around the area, a community filled with turkey growers.
Burning turkey
waste doesn't cause any more pollution than the litter would have created had it
been left to naturally decompose (break down chemically), says Carl Strickler,
chief operating officer of
Fibrominn, the company building Benson's plant. Even
better, its only by-product is ash, which farmers can use as fertilizer.
"There is an opportunity for our technology to help balance the
environment, [reduce] land application of poultry manure, and produce renewable
energy using local resources," says Rupert Fraser, chief executive officer of
Homeland Renewable
Energy, Fibrominn's parent company.
Fibrominn already operates three similar facilities in the United Kingdom.
The plants have combusted more than 5.7 million tons of poultry litter and other
biomass, which generated over 3.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity, and
produced 470,000 tons of ash fertilizer.
Editor WorldPoultry
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