Recycling of poultry feather or Valorization into Value Added Products : An Alternative Cleaning Technique for Poultry Feathers Waste Disposal
Converting Poultry Feathers Into Animal Feeds, Fertilizer
Chicken feathers are waste products of the poultry industry create a serious solid waste problem . It is estimated that 400 million chickens are processed every week. Typically as each bird has up to 125 grams of feather, the weekly worldwide production of feather waste is about 3000 tons. Disposal of this bulk waste is a global environmental problem accounting to pollution of land and underground water resources. Feather constitutes over 90% protein, and composed of two types of Keratins α and β. Keratin is a fibrous and insoluble structural protein extensively cross linked by disulfide bonds. Keratin consists of a number of amino acids but largely made up of cysteine, lysine, proline, and serine . These amino acids tend to cross-link with one another by forming disulfide or hydrogen bonds resulting in fibers that are tough, strong, lightweight, and with good thermal and acoustic insulating properties . Keratinases are emerging to play a vital role in the degradation of keratin and its conversion into digestible animal feed of higher nutritive value. A cost effective fermentation media with stretch as carbon source and soyabean meal as nitrogen source was designed along with optimization of physical parameters of fermentation resulting a yield of > 500KU/ml , However for most of the applications of Keratinase including bioconversion of feather into animal feed, leather processing etc., crude or partially purified enzyme is sufficient. The poultry feathers pollute the soil, or the burnt which again pollutes the air. In both the cases the presence of sulphur dioxide in feathers bears the danger behind heavy pollution. Use of Keratinolytic microorganisms for feather degradation is an economical, environmental friendly alternative. Keratinases which are produced by these Keratinolytic organisms could be used to degrade waste and further the digested products could be an excellent material for producing animal feed, fertilizers or natural gas.
Indian scientists have developed a new sustainable and affordable solution for converting keratin waste to fertilisers and animal feeds .Animal hair, poultry feathers and other keratin-containing waste is usually dumped, sometimes landfilled, and incinerated. This process is followed throughout the world. But such action leads to pollution of soil, water, and air. Such waste, like feather, also causes many diseases in human.
India too generates a huge amount of human hair, animal hair, poultry feather waste, and wool waste each year. These wastes increase environmental hazards, pollution, and poses a threat to public health, and also increase greenhouse gas emissions.
But now there is good news for poultry and livestock farmers. Indian scientists have developed a new sustainable and affordable solution for converting keratin waste to fertilisers and animal feeds.These wastes are inexpensive sources of amino acids and protein – underlining their potential to be used as animal feed and fertiliser.
“Every keratinous waste can be treated to make fertilisers. In fact, from chicken feathers, we’ve been able to isolate a pure protein which can be consumed as supplement by human beings,” said Professor A. B. Pandit, Vice-Chancellor, Institute of Chemical Technology Mumbai.
Professor Pandit, along with his students, has developed a technology to covert the keratin waste to food for pets and fertilisers for plants with the support from the ‘Waste Management Technology’ programme of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.This novel technology is patented, easily scalable, environment-friendly, energy-efficient, and will make amino acid-rich liquid fertilisers more economical as compared to currently marketed products.
The time required for the process depends on the type of product needed.“If the product required is either animal feed or fertilisers, it takes about six to eight hours. If you wish to isolate the specific protein out of it, then there are additional two-three steps involved. If you want to separate the amino acids from the protein, then there are other steps required to be followed… There is value addition in each of those steps,” explained Professor Pandit.
His team used advanced oxidation for the conversion of the waste to marketable fertilisers and animal feed. The key technology behind this involves pre-treatment followed by hydrolysis of keratin using a technique called Hydrodynamic Cavitation, which involves vaporisation, bubble generation, and bubble implosion in a flowing liquid.
“The cost of isolating protein in pure form – that can be used as protein supplement for human consumption – is working out to about Rs. 120-150 per kg,” said Professor Pandit.
“Compare that to the price of protein supplement available in the market for around Rs. 700-800 for a kg,” added the innovator.The current chemicals, and the physical methods for such conversion are energy-intensive, chemically hazardous, and involve multiple steps – resulting in a higher cost of the final product. As calculated by the team, with this technology, the cost of the product at a large-scale plant is up to three folds cheaper than the existing market product. The scientists are currently implementing this technology at a large scale in collaboration with Revoltech Technologies Private Limited, Gujarat. This advancement in production will make the liquid biofertilizers which more efficient than the marketed product, available to farmers at an affordable rate.
“It works out to be extremely economical. Even liquid fertilisers can be sold for Rs. 15-20 a litre,” claimed the Vice-Chancellor.“The nitrogenous fertilisers are easily digestible by plants. Here you have natural fertiliser when the world is trying to move away from synthetic products due the hazards,” he added.
Commercial poultry processing is a sector of the industry that produces large quantities of organic by-products. The inedible waste generated in poultry slaughterhouses is estimated to be approximately 89% of all by-products from poultry processing. Large quantities of feathers are produced as a waste by-product of a poultry processing plant. Feather waste is a serious problem worldwide as it is produced in large quantities every year. By-products derived from the activities of the industry include residues such as feathers, bone meal, blood and calf. Chicken feathers make up 5% of the body weight of the chicken and form a significant waste product from the poultry industry.
These feathers have the problem of disposing of significant waste. Many different methods have been used to dispose of feather waste, such as landfilling, incineration, and natural gas production and fodder. They also often become hazardous to waste disposal/environmental pollution, incinerated or dumped in landfills. Most feather waste can contaminate the air, soil and water by filling or burning the ground. The current value-added use of feathers is to convert it into feather meal, using digestible food protein, physical and chemical treatments for fodder. These methods destroy certain amino acids and reduce protein quality and digestion. Innovative solution for waste disposal along with biotechnological alternative for recycling keratin rich waste is very important. Poultry feathers are insoluble in nature and are less susceptible to digestion due to proteolytic enzymes and chemical or physical factors mostly keratin content. High resistance to decay and diversity of microflora, including pathogenic microorganisms, make this feather waste an environmental and health hazard problem. Due to storage problems and microbiological threat, feather waste must be cleaned quickly. Currently, the main management method of feather by-products is feather meal production, which is used as an adjunct to fodder. Feathers are processed in utilization plants approved by steam pressure cooking. Consumption method requires high financial costs due to the high energy input that must be applied for denaturation of keratin. Biological methods involving microorganisms and their enzymes can be applied to feather structure degradation as an alternative to current technology. Composting with manure is the cheapest and easiest way, but it is a lengthy process that must meet the requirements of a veterinary inspection, including a closed composting field with periodic sewer carry systems and periodic microbiological tests. The biggest problem for composting is odor emission and long tolerance. This process does not guarantee the destruction of keratin fibers or pathogenic organisms. The lack of easy and economically attractive methods for the use of feather waste allows for the discovery of new effective technology that ensures the normal use of consumer products. Keratin is a structural component of the interior of most birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, usually occurs in nature and is therefore produced as waste product in a variety of ways. Large amounts of keratinous waste from leather industries, agricultural industries or slaughterhouses can lead to serious en- vironmental impact by dumping unused animal skins in the natural biological zone. The growing concern for environmental pollution and the immediate search for useful substances have led to the development of many technologies to bioconversion keratinous waste into recyclable products. Biodegradation of severely formed animal waste is now considered as an alternative way to create a viable end product with benefits visible to primary producers in environmental and economic management strategies. The combination of specific waste products through biological methods not only leads to better utility production, but also confidence in waste management practices.
Chicken meat is considered as one of the cheapest and healthiest sources of protein, resulting in increased annual consumption boosting up the poultry sector. As a result, globally every year around 7 million tonnes of chicken feathers were produced as waste (Verma et al., 2017; da Silva, 2018). Major amount of these feathers is dumped in landfills or burnt as waste or incinerated leading to pollution, while a small proportion is used as feedstock, decorative material, bedding materials, etc. (Tesfaye et al., 2017). Feathers generally account for an average 5- 7% of the total body weight of a mature chicken and are made up of about 91% of keratin protein, 1% lipids and 8% of water (Babalola et al., 2020). The conventional methods used for feather processing include chemical treatment and pressure cooking which convert feathers into animal feed, but these methods not only require huge amount of energy also, destroy amino acids (Kodak et al., 2019). Due to lack of proper management, poultry feather waste has evolved as a major pollutant due to its recalcitrant nature (Brandelli et al., 2015). The recalcitrant property of keratin is result of high order fibrous structures constructed by disulfide bonds, hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions. Unlike, physical and chemical treatment processes, feather treatments with biological techniques are more optimistic and considered as an alternative environmental-friendly method for recycling and valorizing feathers (Calin et al., 2017; Bhari et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2019), because bioprocesses are favourable in keeping the valuable nutrients that are vulnerable to intolerant conditions of pH, temperature and pressure. The feather waste is recycled in nature by keratinolytic microorganisms that secrete extracellular keratinases (Tamreihao et al., 2019; Li, 2019). The studies related to biodegradation of feather are more engaged with the screening and determination of various microorganisms that possess the ability to degrade the keratin protein present in feathers. Different microbes including bacteria and fungi have been isolated and identified to have keratinolytic enzyme thus, are able to degrade feathers (Demir et al., 2015; Sivakumar and Raveendran, 2015). Potent keratinase synthesizing microbes have been reported from the bacterial species of genus like Bacillus, Pseudomonas and Streptomyces, and fungal species belonging to genus Aspergillus, Penicillium and Chrysosporium (Verma et al., 2017). This article presents a discussion on various keratinolytic microorganisms for the management of poultry waste. Since the poultry feather waste is protein-rich waste, prominence is towards the biological conversion of these waste materials into valueadded products.
The poultry feathers which are worldwide adding on the loads of waste can be utilized as a valuable resource by the use of keratinase producing microbes, instead of dumping into the landfills or treating them with high cost chemical and physical method for further use. The feather hydrolysate thus produced is enriched in minerals and essential amino acids like tryptophan, which act as the precursor for indole acetic acid promoting the root growth in plant. In addition to the plant growth and regulation, the hydrolysed keratinous material helps in nourishing the soil and improving its quality. Chicken feathers are waste products generated from poultry processing. Globally, 8.5 billion tons of feathers are generated annually, with approximately 350 million tons generated in India alone [10]. The large number of feather waste causes environmental problems and contaminates the air, water, and soil. However, chicken feathers can be fermented with bacterial cells to produce an organic nitrogen supplement for the cultivation of fields.
Keratinase has potential applications in the beam house operations of the leather and tanning industry to improve the quality of leather for the manufacture of leather products and textiles. Keratinase also promises to convert keratin-rich poultry and other industrial waste into dietary protein that can be used as food and feed supplements. Another natural option for applying keratinase is to improve recycling for feather use as organic fertilizer. The biological activity of soil organic matter, nutrients and microorganisms significantly contributes to ecosystem level processes that are important for productivity, community building and reproduction in terrestrial ecosystems. Feather meal produced in the traditional way has also been tested as a semi slow release nitrogen fertilizer for organic farming. Despite the enormous potential application of keratinase in many fields with economic and environmental values, the main limiting factor in the widespread use of keratinase is the availability of effective microorganisms and the development of a low-cost method for largescale production of keratinase. The development of bioprocesses that can convert large amounts of feather by-products into value-added products has been identified as a top priority. It is very necessary and appropriate to meet the growing demand for animal products by the growing global population. Improving the nutritional value of feathers provides better value protein feed elements that can replace the soybean and fish meal in the livestock diet. Achieving this financially is crucial to developing an additional and cheaper source of animal protein for livestock feeding. Given the thermo energetic cost of conventional processing of feathers, research on alternative technologies for recycling feather waste with nutritional improvement, environmental friendliness and bioresource optimization possibilities is highly justified, as opposed to their limited nutritional improvement. Converting feathers into feather meal is now considered a source of high value food and the production of digestible proteins.
What is Keratin, and where does it come from?
Keratin is a highly specialized fibrous structural protein synthesized inside the epithelial cells of humans and higher vertebrates. The high cysteine amino acid content is the main characteristic that differentiates Keratin from the other structural proteins such as collagen and elastin. Cystine residues of neighbouring polypeptide chains are covalently linked together through disulfide bridges. This results in a high degree of cross-linking that brings about the formation of a tight and compact structure. The amount of the keratin protein contents varies from 70 % to 85 % as per the source of Keratin, such as human hair, poultry feathers, horns, bristles, and wool, etc.
How much is keratin waste globally and in India?
Keratin wastes are considered environmental pollutants and are mostly generated from poultry farms, slaughterhouses, and leather industries. The main producer of keratin waste includes the United States of America, China, India, and Brazil, producing millions of tons of keratin waste.
Worldwide, around 2 million metric tons of wool, 0.3 million tonnes of human hair, and 8.5 billion tons of poultry feathers are generated annually, of which India contributes to 350 million tons. India generates a huge amount of human hair, animal hair, poultry feather waste, and wood waste each year. These keratin wastes are the third most abundant renewable polymeric material present in nature after cellulose and an inexpensive source of amino acid and Protein – underlining their potential to be used as animal feed and fertilizer.
What are the ill effects of keratin waste?
Animal hair, poultry feathers, and other keratin-containing waste are usually dumped, sometimes landfilled, and incinerated. This is observed throughout the world. But such action leads to pollution of soil, water, and air. These wastes increase environmental hazards and pollution and threaten public health while also increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Keratin-rich wastes such as feathers also cause many diseases in humans.
Keratin Proteins
Feathers are constructed of keratin protein having molecular weight approx. 10 kDa (Esparza et al., 2017) and extensively crosslinked by disulfide bonding (Lange et al., 2016) which provide rigidity and mechanical stability (Kodak et al., 2019). Keratin protein is rich in amino acids like cysteine, proline and serine, the major proportion is of 8.85% cystine . Presence of sulphur in form of thiol (-SH) groups in cysteine leads to the stabilization of the keratin as it forms a network between the adjacent polypeptides through disulphide crosslinkages (Wang et al., 2016). These resolute covalent bonds in conjugation with hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic forces stabilize the three-dimensional structure of protein providing high mechanical strength (Wang et al., 2016). Keratin proteins are categorized in two types based on structures – a-helix and b-pleated sheet. a keratins are rich in cysteine containing less proportion of proline and hydroxyproline amino acids and generally present in the soft tissues, while b- keratins are aggregated in the hard tissue regions and are enriched with alanine and glycine but lack in cysteine, hydroxyproline and proline amino acids (Sharma and Gupta, 2016).
Valorization of Poultry Feathers
Feathers embrace fat, water and various minerals like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, zinc and copper, which make them compatible for being served as valuable energy and material sources (Tamreihao et al., 2019) for animals or for microbial growth (Li, 2019). Microbial degradation of the chicken feathers is the most convenient and environmentfriendly method for handling the poultry feather waste so far. Even though feathers of chicken are rich in keratin which makes them resistant to degradation, these are not bulked up in nature, indicating that these are being degraded by certain microbes. Research carried out in past decades shows that there are many micro-organisms that can degrade the keratin rich waste including feathers and the process of microbial degradation of feather is an enzymatic activity. Various strains of bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes secrete extracellular keratinolytic and proteolytic enzymes called keratinases which act upon the keratin protein and degrade the hard protein (Calin et al., 2017; Bohacz and Kowalska, 2019; Li, 2019). Various microbial species like fungi and bacteria including some species of actinomycetes were isolated from different environments capable of producing keratinase enzymes.
Mechanism of Keratin Degradation by Microorganisms
Keratinases are extracellular inducible enzymes produced by microorganisms, which are robust in structure and are specific for keratinous substrates. These enzymes are composed of serine or metalloproteases which possess the ability to degrade both soft and hard keratins by targeting on b-pleated sheets and a-helical structures (Verma et al., 2016; Bhari et al., 2019). In vitro studies of the keratinase structure and feather degradation have led researchers to a conclusion that the keratin degradation is not achieved by a single keratinase enzyme as they lack the ability to break the disulphide bonds present in keratin (Li, 2019). After several proposed mechanisms, it has been recognized that keratinolytic process is mainly comprised of two different processes : sulphite-o-lysis -process of breaking disulphide bonds and proteolysis, process of protein breakdown which is followed by the process of deamination (Tamreihao et al., 2019). Enzymes like sulphide reductases or some reducing agents such as sulphite are emanated by the microbe which plays the crucial part in removing the disulphide bonds associated in keratin, ultimately changing the structural conformations, and availing more active sites for further action by proteolytic enzymes (Lange et al., 2016). Finally, the feathers were efficiently degraded to peptides and soluble amino acids .
Bacteria and fungi follow different mechanisms for the purpose of keratin degradation. In addition to the above cited processes viz., sulphite-o-lysis and proteolysis, mechanical destruction of the keratin also plays a vital role in degradation by fungi .
Feather Conversion to Fertilizer
The potential of microbial keratinases to enhance and accelerate the composting of dead chicken or discarded feathers could be a feasible and eco-friendly technique of recycling these organic wastes into nitrogen-rich fertilizers (Brandelli et al., 2015). The hydrolysates obtained after the microbial treatment of poultry feathers could be used as organic nitrogen fertilizer/soil conditioner (Brandelli et al., 2015) as it is rich in soluble proteins, amino acids, enzymes and many other valuable products (Pahua-Ramos et al., 2017). Microbial action on feathers causes a slow release of nitrogen which is readily available to plants (Kumar, 2021). Also, the degradation of keratin leads to release of tryptophan in large amount which is a key source for the synthesis of indole-3- acetic acid by microbes, thus providing a plant growth promoting activity (Bhange et al., 2016). Feather compost increases the N, P and K content of the soil leading to surplus growth of the crops. In a study on rapeseed, the microbe derived feather hydrolysate significantly increased plant biomass (Popko et al., 2015). Further, the metabolites produced after feather degradation positively affect the germination and growth of plants (Bhange et al., 2016) as well as enhance the chemical properties of the soil like increase in the water holding capacity and permeability of the soil.
Feathers Conversion to Animal Feed
The traditional methods of handling feather waste include burning in open, incineration, land filling and degradation by physical (steam cooking) chemical methods (Acid/alkali hydrolysis). Since keratins protein embraced in feathers is rich source of essential amino acids like cysteine, glutamine, proline and serine amino acids (Tesfaye et al., 2017), feathers are used for production of animal feeds by steam and chemical treatment (Sharma and Gupta, 2016). In place of alkali hydrolysis and steam pressure-cooking of feathers, feather degradation via keratinase seems to be a viable alternative providing resultant products with better nutritional properties for being used as animal feed (Brandelli et al., 2015). There have been number of keratinolytic proteases investigated for meeting the purpose of producing hydrolysed feather keratin for feed production. Bacillus licheniformis is reported to produce keratinase that enhanced the digestibility of the total amino acid from 30 to 66% of raw feather and from 77 to 99% commercial feather meal. Also, the commercial product Versazyme®, is derived from keratinase identical to subtilisin produced by B. licheniformis, effectively examined as feed additive (Brandelli et al., 2015). Moreover, studies have revealed that chicken feather hydrolysates produced by use of microbial keratinase result in improved nutritional values, protein efficiency ratio and protein digestibility than the feather keratin and feather meal (Kumar, 2021). In a comparative study among the enzymatic and alkali treatments for processing feathers from dead hens suggested that the separation of feathers was faster with alkaline treatment while the nutritional characteristics of feathers were improved by feather-digesting enzyme (Brandelli et al., 2015). The amino acids content of chicken feathers degraded by keratinases from Microsporum fulvum IBRL SD3 comprised various essential amino acids viz., threonine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, histidine and tyrosine (Kshetri et al., 2017). Hence, it demonstrates that hydrolysed feather protein can be a significant source of protein that may be used in animal diets. The molecular weights of the polypeptides in the hydrolysate were found to be approximately 1.3 kDa. This indicates that the hydrolysate was mainly composed of short peptides/ oligopeptides, which are easily absorbed by animals and have potential applications in food additives.
Innovative Technology of Indian Scientist Converting Poultry Feathers Into Animal Feeds, Fertilizer—–
The research group lead by Professor Pandit at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India, has developed a technology to covert the keratin waste to food for pets and fertilizers for plants with support from the ‘Waste Management Technology’ program of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. The research group is specialized, and a pioneer in hydrodynamic cavitation technology and have successfully commercialized for process intensification in chemical, physical and biological processes for water treatment and waste management. The research group used an advanced oxidation method for the conversion of the waste to commercial fertilizers and animal feed. The technology involves pre-treatment followed by the hydrolysis of Keratin using a technique called hydrodynamic cavitation, which involves vaporization, bubble generation, and bubble implosion in a flowing liquid. The developed novel technology is patented, easily scalable, environment-friendly, energy-efficient, and will make amino acid-rich liquid fertilizers and feeds more economical than currently marketed products.
The current chemicals and the physical methods for such conversion are energy-intensive, chemically hazardous, and involve multiple steps – resulting in a higher cost of the final product. The developed technology is semi-continuous, with less unit operation and process time required as compared to the conventional chemical, physical and biological processes. The cost of the product at a large-scale plant is up to three folds cheaper than the existing market product. The technology is successfully developed on a pilot scale for various keratin-rich wastes such as human hair, wool, and chicken feathers to highly valuable products such as protein and amino acid hydrolysate, liquid fertilizer, and animal feeds. The demonstration plant for keratin processing is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Demonstration plant for keratin waste processing at Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India
The total time and steps required for the process depend on the type of end product needed.
- If the end product is animal feeds or fertilizers, it takes about six to eight hours.
- If the target end product is to isolate the specific Protein out of it, then additional steps are involved for protein extraction.
- If the target end product separates the amino acids from the Protein, then further specific steps must be followed.
Scientists have also successfully isolated the Protein from wool, chicken feathers, and human hair, which can be additionally used for animal feeds and cosmetic applications [Figure 2].
Figure 2 Liquid fertilizer from keratin waste
The isolated Protein from chicken feathers [a], human hair [b] is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3:Protein extracted from keratin waste
These proteins having applications as animal feeds, cosmetic formulations, protein supplements, etc
Process of converting poultry feathers into animal feeds and liquid fertilizer-
The overall process for converting the poultry feathers involved washing and cleaning of poultry feathers followed by the hydrolysis and extraction of the Protein using advanced oxidation. The hydrolysate can be further used as liquid fertilizer with other additive nutrients, and also it can further be used for the isolation of Protein and amino acids. The final proteins and amino acids are having high quality, and they can be an affordable source of Protein and amino acids as animal feeds.
Benefits/ Impact of this Technology
When every possible move is being made to attain developments sustainably, the new technology is a positive development in addressing environmental concerns while also providing scope for aquatic and poultry feed.
- The Developed Technology is easily scalable and sustainable to convert keratin waste in high value addition products such as liquid fertilizer, animal feeds, protein supplements, and cosmetic formulations at an affordable rate.
- Animal feeds supplement to poultry farmers at an affordable rate
- Additional Revenue generation for poultry farmers from waste.
- Sustainable technological solution for addressing environmental concerns.
What is the economics involved?
This technology will make the liquid biofertilizers more efficient than the marketed product. The developed liquid fertilizer product is extremely economical. Even liquid fertilizer will be sold for Rs. 0.20 to 0.30 USD per litre. The nitrogenous fertilizers are easily digestible by plants and promote plant growth. This innovation in natural fertilizer is essential as the world is trying to move away from synthetic products due to their numerous hazards.
The developed technology is sustainable and environmentally friendly and produces no such chemical waste at the end of processing, fulfilling the demands of a sustainable and clean process to protect the environment. The cost of isolating Protein in pure form – that can be used as a protein supplement for human consumption – is calculated out to about Rs. 2 $ per kg,” said Professor Pandit. “Compare that to the price of protein supplement currently available in the Indian market for around Rs. 9 to 10 $ per kg.
How can Poultry Farmer benefit?
The advancement in technology production will make the Protein, which is three folds more efficient than the marketed product, available to farmers at an affordable rate. This technology also resolved the poultry farmer’s waste disposal issue and generated extra revenue from the keratin waste. Thus, it can help in the socio-economic development of the farmers and the country.
The scientists suggest the collection of the chicken feather waste and processing them onsite is optimal as it makes them easier for transportation and solves the issue of untreated chicken feathers present several health hazards.
The concept of a mobile collection unit can collect the keratin-rich waste and pre-processing it at poultry houses to avoid the spread of human health hazards and transportation issues. The mobile collection unit can be installed so that poultry farmers can pre-process raw materials, which can be sent to the industry for further processing. This solution provides benefits to the poultry farmers to generate the a- revenue from the chicken feathers waste and resolved the issue of waste disposal. The developed final product can be a cheap source of protein supplement, which can be used as a protein supplement with other animal feeds at a low cost.
How big a Setup is required for converting keratin waste into animal feeds and fertilizers?
Currently, the technology is under commercialization with a capacity of 1 tonne per day of keratin waste processing into animal feeds, liquid fertilizer, amino acid, and protein supplements.
What other areas can this technology be useful in?
The developed technology is successfully tried for the effective extraction of an essential compounds from other natural sources. We are commercializing the technology for the valorization of agriculture waste into valuable products and exploring the application for further waste valorization also, the scientists said.
Is this process environment friendly?
The developed technology is environmentally friendly and does not generate any waste in the process, which is harmful to the environment. It addresses waste management and environmental pollution issues and generates extra income for poultry processing plants.
DR MAHENDRA SINGH, POULTRY CONSULTANT, CHANDIGARH
REFERENCE-ON REQUEST
