Cogeneration from poultry industry wastes: Indirectly fired gas turbine application

The availability of wet biomass as waste from a lot of industrial processes, from agriculture and farms and the need to meet the environmental standards force to investigate all options in order to dispose this waste. The possible treatments usually strongly depend on biomass characteristics, namely water content, density, organic content, heating value, etc. In particular, some of these wastes can be burnt in special plants, using them as energy supply for different processes.The study carried out with this paper is concerned with the promising utilization of the organic wastes from an existing poultry industry as fuel. Different plant configurations have been considered in order to make use of the oil and of the meat and bone meal, which are the by-products of the chicken cooking process. In particular, the process plant can be integrated with an energy supply plant, which can consist of an indirectly fired gas turbine.Moreover, a steam turbine plant or a simplified system for the supply of the only technological steam are investigated and compared. Thermodynamic and economic analysis have been carried out for the examined configurations in order to outline the basic differences in terms of energy savings/production and of return of the investments.