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Friday, February 17, 2017

Irish firm tackles burning issue of Maryland’s poultry waste

The first thing a visitor notices when stepping inside two of Brad Murphy’s chicken houses is the smell. Usually, the acrid reek of ammonia assaults the senses upon stepping into a 40,000-bird house. But in these two, there’s barely a whiff.

That’s because Murphy’s farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, called Double Trouble, is part of the state’s big experiment in converting animal manure to energy. An Irish firm, BHSL, has installed a $3 million system that burns the poultry waste to heat the houses.


The system curtails the ammonia fumes that not only make poultry houses stink, but also compromise the birds’ health. It also can give farmers a financial boost — they can avoid paying for propane to heat the houses, and even make a little income from selling excess energy generated by the system that’s fed into the electric grid.


Maryland’s Department of Agriculture has committed nearly $3.8 million to try out a variety of manure-to-energy projects, $1 million of which went to the Double Trouble project. It’s the largest investment made by any Chesapeake Bay watershed state toward finding alternative uses for the massive amounts of animal waste generated by poultry, dairy and other livestock farms.


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6 comments:

Gary said...

About time the State finally got onboard with this type system. The Europeans have been dealing with these issues for years and one group attempted to build a plant of this type in Somerset County years ago...before it hit critical mass.....now it's a must to project.

Anonymous said...

Bless them, the Irish know their shite!

Anonymous said...

A 3mill furnace, spiffy. How many year will it take to pay for itself? How much in subsidies will it take to put one in every chicken farm, how much is the price of chicken and our taxes going up to pay for this subsidy?

Steve said...

This is common in the midwest. I visited a "pig factory". multi story self feeding and self cleaning methane conversion run in 1972. This is old science.

Whoever "just thought this up" is a liar.

Anonymous said...

More passing fads.The phosphourus remains. That is the problem for the shore. Trust me, selling chicken poop ash is a pipe dream. It will hang around in big chicken poop ash piles and be washed into the Bay! Mark my words.

bob pinto said...

I agree with satterfield and that we hope it works.

But the article had some errors.
" Evans says. “When you walk into one of the houses that is heated, you can see clear to the end of the house. "

That has nothing to do with ammonia but DUST making the air dirty.

And they mentions the "birds' urine".

Uh, birds don't urinate.