Efficient poultry industry waste management approach in the bioeconomy framework

Abstract

In order to ensure EU’s transition to a climate-neutral energy environment, in accordance with the Paris Agreement, enhanced energy efficiency of waste utilization emerges as an important tool to achieve carbon neutrality goals. Several technologies for renewable waste treatment are investigated lately, researches worldwide focusing on exploiting their energy potential and diminishing the environmental impact. It is remarkable that, solid renewable waste is suitable to supply in particular grate or layer combustion plants. This energy valorization solution reached the technical maturity, experimentally and numerically proven. Further, to support regional development incentives implementation, local utilization of different wastes is strongly encouraged. Considering the fairly uniform territorial spread of poultry farms in Romania, this paper presents a case study aiming to provide a sustainable solution for bird waste management and local energy recovery from it, avoiding significant additional costs, as well as storage and transportation issues. The energy independence level is assessed in two scenarios. To this regard, the energy consumption of a real poultry production hall of 910 m2 (located in Giurgiu County, having 4650 birds/operating cycle, with a poultry waste flow of 558 kg waste ⁄day) is taken into account. The first scenario analyzes the disposal (for energy recovery purposes) of poultry waste as an individual raw material, while the second scenario investigates a mixture of poultry waste and agricultural biomass residues. It is demonstrated that the electricity and heating requirements of the hall can be partially satisfied in the first scenario and fully in the second one. Therefore, the multi-waste management concept investigated in this paper represents a sustainable solution to reduce industry’s carbon footprint, answering multiple requirements in the environmentally friendly energy sector development.