The Sietch Blog

Feb 27
Chickee Poo

Written by Rt

As every large industry moves to make its operations more efficient this chicken farmer isn’t about to be left out.

John Logan is basically a conservationist at heart. So, when the retired computer specialist and business man took over the eastern Mississippi chicken farm that had been in his family for seven generations, he wanted to try something new: growing a fuel crop. All he had to do was capitalize on the farm’s existing resource: chicken manure.

Logan began working with a team of chemists from Mississippi State University, to create a “recipe” that turns poultry waste into methane gas, which then can be used just like natural gas.

Logan got several government grants to build an experimental station on his farm. There, several large silver tanks, powered by solar panels, convert waste from the 275,000 chickens in his 10 massive, high-tech chicken houses into methane.

“For the last eight months we’ve been generating electricity and generating gas to heat the chicken houses,” the farmer says proudly. “My goal was to replace my existing utility costs to heat the farm, which come to about $100,000 a year on this size operation. So at the present time, it replaces 100 percent of my electricity.” He even has extra power to sell to the local utility company.

The Methane Capture Project has caught the attention of nearby Mount Olive, home to a large plant currently under construction, which will create biodiesel and ethanol fuel. That plant will be powered by methane from poultry waste brought in from surrounding farms. Its developers hope the operation may someday fuel the entire city.

Officials from government and industry are also starting to recognize the potential of the Methane Capture Project. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding experimental on-farm sites in Mississippi and several other states. Some large poultry processors are launching renewable energy divisions to power their feed mills. And a fuel company is investigating the possibility of pumping chicken-waste methane instead of natural gas through its pipeline, and to use it to power some of the generators along the way.

Kinda gives new meaning to the word chickenshit.