Poland’s ambitions to create a circular economy have taken a significant step forward, as new facilities are to be constructed using poultry waste to generate renewable energy.
Generating a total of 2.0 megawatts (MW), three plants are being built in the province of West Pomerania in northern Poland, according to biotech firm, Ductor.
End products of the process are renewable electricity and organic fertilizer, using poultry waste as the only substrate. Scheduled to come into full production in 2021, two of the plants have a capacity of 0.5MW, and the third will produce 1MW.
Around 50,000 metric tons of poultry waste — the equivalent to about 1% of the total produced in Poland each year — will be used to “power” the new biogas facilities.
The chosen locations for the biogas generators — within 100 kilometers of the Baltic Sea — is key for the delivery of the project’s environmental benefits, according to Ductor's founder and CEO, Ari Ketola.
“These plants will be close to the Baltic Sea where they will decrease the need for coal-based energy, prevent nutrient runoff into the Baltic Sea, and replace chemical fertilizer with recycled nutrients,” he said.
More on Ductor
According to the firm’s own website, Ductor is a global biotech company that is changing the world through groundbreaking innovation, design, and the circular economy. It aims to “fight climate change, produce renewable energy and solve increasing food demand and waste accumulations challenges.”
Founded in 2009, the Finnish-Swiss biotech firm is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. Since patenting its system in 2015, Ductor says it has completed the development and commercialization of its groundbreaking bioenergy process.
Last year, Ductor completed its first biofertilizer-biogas facility in Mexico. As well as further projects underway in Poland, the firm reports that others are planned elsewhere in Europe, and in the Americas.
Ductor is founded by Esperotia Investments Ltd.
Polish study on biogas production from poultry manure
While wastes are the preferred substrates for biogas production, some sources — including poultry manure — have proved to be challenging to use as the sole material in anaerobic systems. However, solutions to some of the challenges have been developed by researchers in Poland.
In a paper published in the Journal of Ecological Engineering, Jakub Mazurkiewicz and co-authors at the University of Lublin and the Poznan University of Life Sciences explored the optimum conditions for the fermentation of poultry manure in an anaerobic digestion in a farm setting. They also investigated the use of the end product as a fertilizer.
Published in 2019, their study is entitled “A possibility of functioning biogas plant at a poultry farm.”
Poultry waste is also being used to generate renewable energy in Chile, Northern Ireland, Ukraine, and the U.S.
