September 11, 2009

Professors at North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia have devised a new technology which will limit the smell of poultry rendering operations.

Companies process the fowl's non-edible parts - guts, bones and feathers - so they can be used as ingredients in products such as dog food and even in chicken feed. But this process, referred to as rendering, has a downside: It can produce rank odours that sometimes leak out of a building and bother people living near the facility.

Essentially, it identifies what chemical compounds are causing the odour and targets them with catalytic ozonation to deodorise the compounds.

Perdue Farms Inc. has a rendering plant in Accomack, which receives materials left over from the processing of roasters and Cornish game hens at its Salisbury plant, said Luis Luna, a spokesman for the company.

The technology uses ozone to neutralise the bad odours, and to increase its odour-removing power, they created a catalyst by placing cobalt and nickel oxides on the surface of activated carbon.

Researchers said the process takes place at room temperature and results in only two by-products - carbon dioxide and water.

According to the researchers, Accomack rendering plant treats its foul-smelling vapours by drawing them into a device called a "condenser/scrubber." It sprays water into the gas in several stages and also treats the gas with chlorine dioxide.

At this point, the technology is not designed for the thousands of chicken houses that are part of Delmarva's US$2 billion poultry industry.

Studies are still ongoing as researchers would have to identify what is causing the specific smells produced in a chicken house, such as ammonia, and devise what compounds should be used to cancel out the smell.