An Australian poultry farmer is developing a system that could turn thousands of tonnes of chicken waste into electricity, fertiliser and natural food colouring, creating multiple products from a material that is commonly used as agricultural manure. Chris Freney, who operates a poultry farm in Toongabbie, in Victoria's Gippsland region, has been exploring ways to extract energy and recover nutrients from poultry litter. His proposed larger facility is designed to process 35,000 tonnes of litter annually and generate enough electricity to meet the estimated needs of around 1,200 homes. The project combines anaerobic digestion, a process that produces biogas from organic material, with nutrient recovery and the cultivation of spirulina, an algae used to produce natural blue pigments.
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