Chicken Manure Cleans Up Polluted Water

WASHINGTON - Jul 7/05 - SNS -- USDA researchers have found a way to convert chicken manure into a product capable of cleaning polluted waters.

Isabel Lima and Wayne Marshall, researchers at the ARS Southern Regional Research Center in New Orleans, La., have found that charring poultry waste -- burning it in an oxygen-free environment -- yields a material with impressive surface area and spongelike qualities, ideal for mopping up pollutants.

The problem of animal waste disposal and management is a serious one in many countries. In the United States, food animals produce about 350 billion pounds of manure a year.

Some of that nutrient-rich waste can be used to fertilize fields. But soils can easily become too saturated with manure, causing excess nitrogen and phosphorus from the waste to leach into nearby rivers and waterways--which, in turn, causes algal blooms and other ecological disruption downstream.

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