Environmental aspects and economic evaluation of new green hydrolysis method for waste feather processing

Olga Solcova,Jiri Hanika,Kamila Vavrova,Lenka Wimmerova,Jaroslav Knapek,Milena Rouskova,Tomas Kralik,Stanislav Sabata

doi:10.1007/s10098-021-02072-5

Abstract

In recent years, an increase in the chicken meat process industry has been growing quickly, which brings a large amount of difficult to process waste, chicken feathers. These billions of kilograms create a serious waste problem over the world, furthermore, poultry feather processing is not only particularly difficult but also relatively expensive. In fact, there is no technology suitable for processing such huge quantities of feathers to guarantee sustainable development of the chicken meat industry together with processing of waste feathers. This article introduces a newly designed and original, highly efficient and environmentally friendly method of physicochemical hydrolysis of waste feathers. The hydrolysis is carried out in the presence of a weak organic carboxylic acid; thus, the resulting hydrolysate does not contain any salts or ashes. Therefore, a resulting hydrolysate, which includes a mixture of amino acids, peptides, proteins, glycoproteins and free fatty acids, is suitable for a variety of applications; e.g. as a chondroprotective agent in the treatment of joint diseases, nutrients for crop plants or targeted biostimulants for agriculture. This paper is focused not only on the process scale-up but also on environmental aspects and economic evaluations to bring general view of the process.Graphic abstract

Highlights

The chicken meat process industry has been growing quickly over the whole world (Kanani et al 2020)
Production mix, CZ was considered during this life cycle analysis (LCA) study, these impacts could be reduced by using some other electricity sources, such as natural gas or photovoltaics or wind, which are commercially accessible in the Czech Republic
The newly designed environmentally friendly method of waste feather hydrolysis was successfully scaled-up to 8000 L, which enables processing of large feather volumes

Summary

Introduction

The chicken meat process industry has been growing quickly over the whole world (Kanani et al 2020). Keywords Animal waste · Hydrolysis of chicken feathers · Green hydrolysate composition · Environmental aspects · Economic evaluation Even in the Czech Republic, a considerably large amount of waste (chicken feathers) is difficult to process, its amount can be estimated at about 15 thousand tonnes.

Results

Conclusion