By Mike Surbrugg

msurbrugg@joplinglobe.com

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — An agricultural engineering researcher at the University of Arkansas said he has found a way to burn poultry litter to heat poultry houses. He said it could be better for the birds, better for the farmers and better for the environment.

Tom Costello worked with Lynndale Systems Inc., a furnace manufacturer in Harrison, to test a furnace prototype that uses a blend of poultry waste and bedding material as fuel to heat chicken houses.

The prototype needs improvements before it is economically feasible for a commercial market, Costello said.

Bob Dodson, Lynndale’s chief executive officer and president, said his company expects to produce furnace units before the end of the year.

Costello’s research team believes the poultry-litter furnace is a way to offset the use of propane or natural gas, and will lower operating costs for the grower and create a use for excess litter on farms where it is generated.

Costello said it also would help protect water quality and decrease greenhouse-gas emissions by lowering the consumption of fossil fuels.

Burned litter produces an ash with phosphorus and potassium. There also is a potential market for that ash as either a fertilizer or as an additive to concrete mix, Costello said.

With the system, a farmer can gather litter from a chicken house and store it under cover outside, close to the poultry-house furnace. The farmer uses a tractor with a front-end loader to dump the litter into a hopper, which delivers it to an auger that feeds the furnace.

A typical chicken house would burn two to four bucket loads of litter a day, depending on the outside temperature, Costello said. A farmer could expect to use about a ton of litter per day to heat a broiler house under typical winter conditions in Northwest Arkansas, he said.

After initial ignition by a propane burner, the prototype maintains combustion with 100 percent raw litter. The furnace is connected to a thermostat in the chicken house that signals when heat is needed to fire the furnace.

Costello said tests have demonstrated that the energy content of litter is in a range of 4,000 to 5,000 British Thermal Units per pound of litter.

With design improvements, the unit could use 100 tons of litter per year, an amount easily produced on most poultry farms. The litter could generate 80 percent of the annual space-heating needs for one broiler house; the other 20 percent could come from propane or natural gas.

Mike Surbrugg is the farm editor for The Joplin Globe.