40 million tons of chicken feathers are incinerated each year. Why not make renewable energy from them, instead?
© Provided by Anthropocene Magazine published by Future Earth
Look at a chicken feather, and what you’re seeing is 91% keratin. Now a team of scientists have found a way to repurpose this abundant agricultural byproduct—and in a surprise move, they’ve used it to make renewable energy.
The scale of the global poultry industry is such that it produces 6 billion tons of chicken feathers each year, most of which are tossed aside. The problem isn’t just the waste, but the impact it goes on to have: an estimated 40 million tons of these waste feathers are burned annually, spewing out sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide in the process.
Meanwhile, keratin is actually an incredible useful ingredient in so many industries, from medicine to packaging. But the researchers on the new study set their targets on green energy for the wasted feather flurry.
They had their eye on a crucial component of hydrogen fuel cells that sorely needs an upgrade. Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity by combining hydrogen with oxygen atoms, and produce a clean electrochemical reaction, instead of combustion. Key to this process is the cell’s semi-permeable membrane, across which protons can move to generate the required chemical reaction. However, “normal fuel cell membranes are formed by highly toxic polymers which cannot be degraded, and which persist in the environment,” says the paper’s lead author Raffaele Mezzenga, who is a materials scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/40-million-tons-of-chicken-feathers-are-incinerated-each-year-why-not-make-renewable-energy-from-them/ar-AA1iWAqg?ocid=widgetonlockscreen&cvid=fdd0178c65b54583a6b77be847eeee62&ei=73
