Scientist mixes fish guts and sawdust to create energy
April 28, 2011
907-474-5042
4/28/11
When one of Alaska鈥檚 largest seafood processors was fined $1.9 million for discharging fish waste into the ocean last month, 性欲社 assistant professor Andy Soria watched the media coverage closely and shook his head.
His experiments could benefit fish processors by turning salmon waste into fuel.
鈥淚n Alaska alone, there are 100,000 metric tons of salmon wastes dispersed into the ocean each year,鈥 Soria said. The waste is so massive that it can鈥檛 decompose into fish food. 鈥淭here are underground mountains of fish waste.鈥
Soria has been experimenting with mixing fish waste and the sawdust of coastal alder or black spruce to create pellets. The mixture of fish and sawdust is compressed and placed inside a gasifier to produce a natural gas equivalent.
The pellets can accommodate up to 25 percent wet fish slurry and still retain heating value. The ideal proportion of salmon fish slurry鈥攁 mixture of guts, heads, tails and viscera with a moisture content of 70 percent鈥攊s 20 percent of the total pellet.
鈥淚n practice, reducing 20 percent, or 20,000 metric tons, of wastes that are dumped into the ocean is a very positive thing,鈥 Soria said.
The pellets smell like a fresh fishy river, Soria said, not like rotting fish. 鈥淚t looks like wood and smells like fish.鈥
The results have been very positive, Soria said. 鈥淲e can use an industrial waste product, a natural resource for Alaska, as high-quality feed stock and provide heat to the cannery. They can reap the benefits of excess waste and offset operating costs by displacing the diesel fuel needed to run the cannery operations.鈥
Soria鈥檚 work, performed in the Renewable-Based Hydrocarbons Lab at the Palmer Center for Sustainable Living, has been done on a small scale. He knows that canneries would have to make a capital investment to set up such a system, but he deems that a better answer than paying fines.
鈥淭his is the first piece,鈥 he said. 鈥淭his project proves fish waste can make energy.鈥
He would like to continue studying the ash composition and emissions profile.
鈥淭here is still additional work that needs to occur,鈥 Soria said. With a major source of his funding, the USDA Agricultural Research Service, slated for the federal budget chopping block this October, Soria isn鈥檛 sure about the future of the research.
鈥淭he long-term goal is to design reactor and reaction conditions that will optimize the production of combustible gas from these Alaska-specific waste streams and be able to run generators and provide process heat,鈥 he said.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Andy Soria, 907-746-9487, jasoria@alaska.edu.
NT/4-28-11/218-11