A Green Process for Producing Biodiesel from Feather Meal

Abstract

This paper describes a new and environmentally friendly process for developing biodiesel from commercial feather meal, a waste product of the poultry industry. Currently, feather meal is used as an animal feed, given its high protein content, and also as a fertilizer because of its high nitrogen content. In this work, we have extracted fat from the feather meal in boiling water (70 degrees C) and then transesterified the fat into biodiesel using KOH and methanol; 7-11% biodiesel (on a dry basis) is produced in this process. ASTM analysis of the prepared feather meal biodiesel confirmed that the biodiesel is of good quality and comparable to other biodiesels made from other common feedstocks. Given the amount of feather meal produced by the poultry industry, it is estimated that this process can create 150-200 million gallons of biodiesel in the United States and 593.2 million gallons worldwide.

Supercritical carbon dioxide-based integrated continuous extraction of oil from chicken feather meal, and its conversion to biodiesel in a packed-bed enzymatic reactor, at pilot scale

“…Soxhlet extraction of CFM led to a maximum oil yield of 7.1% w/ w. This value is in good agreement with the fat content of the CFM used by Kondamudi et al [9] -7.5% w/w. The efficiency of the supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) of CFM oil was determined from the cumulative amount of the oil extracted by sc-CO 2 divided by the total amount of oil available in CFM, as determined by Soxhlet extraction:…”

“…75-80% of the total operating cost [3]. This has driven research into the conversion of waste or recycled oil and animal fats into biodiesel, which additionally does not compete directly with food production and allows the integration of waste management operations with a variety of other industries [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…The inedible by-products of chicken slaughtering account for about one third of the total mass of the broiler chicken, resulting in an annual production of 2 million ton of feather meal [14]. This feedstock contains a significant amount of fat, varying from 2% to 12% [9], which can be converted to biodiesel [4,[8][9][10][11]15].…”

Biocatalysis for biomass valorization

“…This is not just a reference to the inedible oils like from jatropha and castor which have been fairly well studied for conversion to biodiesel and biolubricants [10][11][12]. The oils present in spent coffee grounds, bird feather and waste from tobacco industry constitute renewable resources [13][14][15]. With oil from spent coffee grounds, facile conversion to biodiesel has been reported [16].…”

Identification and kinetics characterization of a wax ester hydrolase from a feather-degrading actinomycete

“…However fat content has been known to vary inversely with protein content in feather meal, anywhere from 2-12% (Dale 1992). Some groups have estimated chicken feather fat to be near 11% (Kondamudi et al 2009). Chickens secrete lipids from the uropygial gland onto their plumage for protection from the elements in an act known as preening.…”