The search for a possible use of poultry manure for energy purposes stems from the fact that there is an “overproduction” on farms compared to the quantities that can be used in agriculture as soil improvers.
In the industrialized world, large plants powered exclusively by poultry manure have been built in recent years, sometimes, however, their construction has been the subject of controversy, often ad hoc created by self-styled environmentalists who delayed their implementation by taking advantage of the sensitivity of the public opinion that remains influenced by sensational cases such as avian influenza, feed contaminated with dioxins, etc.
The usefulness of their construction is evident both at a managerial and environmental level. From an economic point of view, the costs of poultry manure disposal and energy supply within poultry farms could be reduced by making them “closed cycle” or “circular economy” farms, while from an environmental point of view, environmental costs would be avoided, related to the transport of the poultry manure itself for its disposal and to the use of the relative non-environmentally sustainable fuels (diesel, oil, etc.) within the farms.
Today, thanks to years of experimentation and prototyping and according to the results obtained, after evaluating the energy yields, the chimney emissions and the ash composition deriving from co-combustion and gasification of poultry manure in the boiler their use for this purpose has now optimized both energy yields and the reduction of polluting emissions.
