Regina Leader-Post, Canada
09-21-06
There may be money in chicken feathers
Ed Willett, Special to The Leader-Post
People eat a lot of chicken (which is surprising, considering, as Ogden Nash
once pointed out, chicken tastes just like rattlesnake).
According to the latest available figures, total domestic consumption in Canada
2003 was 964,576,000 kg, or 30.5 kg per capita.
In the U.S., per capita consumption was 43 kg in 2003, but even that paled
compared to the world leaders in chicken-eating, the residents of the United Arab
Emirates, who eat a whopping 53.5 kg per person per year.
All that chicken-eating translates into mountains and mountains of chicken
feathers -- between 900 million and 1.3 billion kg each year in the U.S. alone.
Since the demand for feather dusters is, sadly, rather low, most of those are
either burned, buried or ground up into feather meal and fed to livestock or used
as fertilizer.
Wouldn't it be great if those feathers could be put to some better use?
A number of scientists think so. One of them, Yiqi Yang, a professor of textile
science at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, presented a study to the
American Chemical Society's national meeting last week on the development of a
new kind of fabric made from chicken feathers.
According to Yang, the feather-based fabric would resemble wool, which isn't
surprising, since feathers are made mostly of keratin, the same protein as wool
(and skin, fingernails and hair, for that matter).
The researchers plan to use the feather's barbs and barbules of the feather -- the
thin filaments that branch out from the feather's main shaft, or quill. They have a
sturdy, air-trapping honeycomb structure that makes them both resilient and
lightweight, properties that could produce fabrics that weigh less and offer better
shock absorption and insulation than wool.
Yang's research into the chicken-feather fabric is still in its early stages. Other
scientists are further along with their own ideas for new uses for chicken
feathers. For example, Justin R. Barone, a research scientist at the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Environmental Quality Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.,
and colleagues have found that chicken-feather keratin is ideal for strengthening
composites. Since the necessary processing can be done using conventional
techniques, chicken-feather-strengthened composites could be cost-competitive
with fiberglass, and eventually find their way into automobiles, boats, and other
structures.
Barone has also found a way to use feathers as a raw material: he grinds them
up and uses the protein to create biodegradable films. These may have particular
use as mulching films, which farmers and gardeners use to prevent weeds from
choking out garden plants and crops. Current mulching films are petroleumbased, and have to be pulled out by hand. Feather-based films could be chopped
up by machinery and would simply provide another nitrogen source.
Over at Iowa State University, Jay-lin Jane, a professor in the department of
food science and human nutrition, and colleague Perminus M. Mungara
have transformed powdered feather meal into biodegradable plastic by blending
it with soy protein and biodegradable polyesters. They've made prototype plastic
containers that are very moisture resistant and degrade naturally.
And at the University of Delaware, Richard P. Wool, a chemical engineering
professor, has created a printed circuit board made from soybeans and chicken
feathers. (The board was such a hit at the Delaware State Fair that a
representative from Tyson Foods offered to give Wool two billion pounds of
chicken feathers. He declined.)
Wool has also experimented with building hurricane-resistant houses out of ...
well, if not exactly out of chicken feathers, at least out of materials based on
keratin fibers derived from chicken feathers. Typical roofs, made of
particleboards nailed together and covered with shingles, are vulnerable to high
winds because the wind can rip the boards away, leaving a hole through which
rain and debris enters the house, causing extensive damage. Wool has created a
feather-based composite roof that's a single piece molded on site. Because it's a
single large piece, it takes more force to pull the roofing away from the house.
Officials in both China and India have expressed an interest in the research.
Chicken feathers: they're not just for the birds any more.