The United Press International (UPI) recently reported that the University Of Arkansas has come up with a method of converting chicken fat to biofuel. This should come as no surprise as Arkansas based Tyson Chicken processes 42 million chickens a week.
Engineers used supercritical methanol to change chicken fat into biodiesel, producing a more than 90% yield.
“The supercritical method hit the free fatty-acid problem head on,” chemical engineering professor R.E. “Buddy” Babcock said. “Because it dissolves the feed material and eliminates the need for the base catalyst, we now do not have the problems with soap formation and loss of yield. The supercritical method actually prefers free fatty acid feedstocks.”
From the University of Arkansas papers website:
“Major oil companies are already examining biodiesel as an alternative to petroleum,” said R.E. “Buddy” Babcock, professor of chemical engineering. “With the current price of petroleum diesel and the results of this project and others, I think energy producers will think even more seriously about combining petroleum-based diesel with a biodiesel product made out of crude and inexpensive feedstocks.”
Supercritical methanol treatment dissolves and causes a reaction between components of a product – in this case, chicken fat and tall oil – by subjecting the product to high temperature and pressure. Substances become “supercritical” when they are heated and pressurized to a critical point, the highest temperature and pressure at which the substance can exist in equilibrium as a vapor and liquid. The simple, one-step process does not require a catalyst.
The fat used for the experiments was indeed donated by Tyson Foods. Who would have thought the humble gospel bird could be used as a fuel source.
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how much fat is per chicken, what is the recovery % and what could be the cost of one galon of biodiesel