ECONOMIC AND TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY OF ENERGY PRODUCTION FROM POULTRY LITTER

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to provide an indication of the technical and economic feasibility of producing electricity and/or process steam from poultry litter. This is a rather challenging task because using poultry litter for energy has not yet been implemented commercially in the United States. Electricity is being produced commercially from poultry litter in the United Kingdom, but most details from these operations are not in the public domain. Poultry litter has been tested in several energy conversion technologies, but the results generally are not in the public domain. Therefore, the technical feasibility discussion is based partly on extrapolation from experiences with biomass fuels with properties and challenges similar to those with poultry litter, and partly on test results in the public domain. Assessing economic feasibility is also a difficult task because commercial examples are lacking and because several of the important factors are quite site specific, including (1) competing fuel and electricity prices, (2) delivered poultry litter feedstock prices, and (3) net revenues that can be generated at an energy plant from poultry litter ash. In addition to being site specific, the latter two factors are rather speculative at this point. Prices that an energy plant will have to pay for poultry litter will depend a lot on how much environmental pressure there ultimately is for developing alternatives to local land application of poultry litter. The net revenue that an energy plant can generate from the fertilizer value of the ash depends on several technical and market factors that need further clarification. This paper provides a framework for assessment and a first-approximation assessment of technical and economic feasibility for some potential scenarios.