Methane Capture on Broiler Poultry Farm for Renewable Energy and Environmental Protection

The overall goal of this project is to implement a unique and innovative, market-based solution, for effectively managing Energy generation on a small broiler poultry farm with four houses, while addressing the highly critical issue of broiler litter disposal. Mississippi, which is the fourth largest poultry producing State in the U.S., generates about 2.2 billion pounds of litter annually. New environmental regulations and health concerns related to mad cow disease and watershed are putting increasing pressure on poultry growers to curb the practice of conventional litter spreading on pasturelands or for cattle feeding. Additionally, the significantly higher Energy costs of a poultry operation today are placing a tremendous financial burden on the farmers. An on-farm anaerobic digester is an innovative approach to conserve water, soil and atmospheric resources while generating bio-based renewable Energy and eliminate the problems of litter disposal as well as dead birds. Additionally the market for carbon credits is emerging in the U.S. and since methane qualifies for 21 times the credits for each unit of carbon dioxide, the returns on investment in digester projects may become a respectable revenue source for the farmers. Even though the science behind anaerobic digestion is well understood, using an anaerobic digester to manage broiler litter is a truly innovative approach and has only become feasible due to a recent change in poultry raising practices as described in the narrative. A very important element of the proposed system is that this project will be a scaled-down, user-friendly, production-oriented version of an experimental poultry litter digester that is currently operational on a ten-house farm in Mississippi and was funded in large part by the State of Mississippi. A smaller scale digester on a farm with four broiler houses will also lend itself to the study of a modular approach to constructing digesters for larger farms in the poultry belt States.