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Feather Waste Recycling for Biogas Production

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Abstract

Feather is produced in large amounts as waste in poultry slaughterhouses. Only 60–70 % of the poultry slaughterhouse products are edible for human. The 15–20 % of the slaughterhouse by-products contains keratin; the proportion of feather is 7–9 %. The high protein content of chicken feather makes it an excellent raw material for biogas production. The keratin-content of feather can be difficulty digested, therefore physical, chemical and/or biological pre-treatment are required to the utilization. Our main objectives were to determine the effect of enzymatic pre-treatment, methane potential of chicken feather waste and the most effective treatment ratios. Student’s t test and Variance analysis with Tukey’s test were applied to examine significant differences between the control and different treatments. Chicken feather was enzymatic degraded, and then digested in anaerobic bioreactors in different ratios. Cattle slurry was used as control without feather. The bioreactor system (four digesters with 6 L volume) was controlled by ACE SCADA software running on Linux operating system which granted pre-programmed measurement and points of intervention for pH, temperature, CH4, CO2, O2. The content of the gas mixture was monitored with custom created gas-analyser and with MX42A gas-analyser (H2S, NH3) which was basis for absorbance measurement. Solubilisation degree (%)—calculated from sCOD—shows 66.23 % difference compared to the control experiments. The 5 % feather mixture ratio resulted in the highest methane yield, the maximal value was 0.37 ± 0.16 Nm3/kg VS. Due to the amount of produced hydrogen sulphide and ammonia (mg/kg) content the critical mixing ratio of feather proved to 5 % in laboratory scale.

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Acknowledgments

We thank to Prof. Kornél L. Kovács, Dr. Zoltán Bagi (University of Szeged, Department of Biotechnology), Szabolcs Molnár, Richárd Kun (University of Debrecen) for professional support and for assistance in the research. We thank to Bence Mátyás and Nikoletta Szalóki for helpful English grammatical advice. This research was supported by the European Union and the State of Hungary, co-financed by the European Social Fund in the framework of TÁMOP-4.2.4.A/2-11/1-2012-0001 ‘National Excellence Program’.

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  1. Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Environmental Management, Institute of Water and Environmental Management, University of Debrecen, Böszörményi str. 138, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary

    Lili Mézes & János Tamás

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Mézes, L., Tamás, J. Feather Waste Recycling for Biogas Production. Waste Biomass Valor 6, 899–911 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-015-9427-7

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