Chicken slaughter waste used as raw material for biodiesel production

July 26, 2021

John Abraham, a veterinary-doctor-turned-inventor, has received the patents for inventing biodiesel from the waste of slaughtered chicken. This biodiesel offers mileage of around 38 km a litre. This biodiesel costs around 40% of the current diesel price and cuts down on pollution by half.

Highlights

The Indian Patent Office finally granted the patent after seven years of waiting.
Mr Abraham works as an associate professor at the Wayanad veterinary college under the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University.
The approval for the patent was delayed as National Biodiversity Authority’s permission was needed since the key raw material used in the invention was a biological material which was locally sourced.
During the years from 2009 to 2012, Mr Abraham pioneered research on producing biodiesel from the slaughter waste of dead poultry birds and broiler chicken. He completed the research under the guidance of late Prof Ramesh Saravanakumar who passed away in the year 2020 while awaiting the patent.
The Kochi Refinery of Bharat Petroleum’s in the year 2015 had issued a quality certificate for the biodiesel that he invented and since then a vehicle of the college was running on this biodiesel.

Why chicken waste was used to invent this biodiesel?

Mr. Abraham stated that pigs and birds have single stomach which offers higher fat saturation and under room temperature this makes it easy to render oil. 1 liter of biodiesel can be produced from 100 kg of chicken waste. The lower pollution and higher mileage is because chicken waste contains 62% fat which offers key energy content of Cetane at 72, while in normal diesel it is 64 only. The high Cetane value of 72 in leads to shorter ignition delays which provides more time for fuel combustion and this leads to less exhaust emission and more efficiency. Smoke levels are also reduced by over 47%.