Swine waste is smelly, unsightly and in parts of North Carolina, it’s also abundant. North Carolina is the nation’s second largest hog-producer so manure is an inevitable byproduct of one of the state’s biggest economic drivers.
Daniel Oldham is intent on turning this waste into a cleantech resource.
Farmers already use manure as fertilizer but hog farms produce too much hog waste to use it all. Most of the waste ends up stored in lagoons. Oldham, a civil engineering student at North Carolina A&T University, has spent the last two years researching an alternative. The result is a process that turns hog waste into a bioadhesive that can replace adhesives used in an array of products such as book bindings, construction materials and roads.
“We have the manure, we might as well do something with it,” Oldham said.
Many of the commercially-available adhesives are petroleum-based products. It turns out that the process for turning manure into a bioadhesive is conceptually not all that different from the process of producing oil. Over thousands of years, heat and pressure in the earth turn decayed plant and animal material into oil. Oldham and his advisor, N.C. A&T Civil Engineering Professor Ellie Fini, developed a proprietary process that applies heat and pressure to swine waste. The process takes just 20 minutes to turn the manure into bioadhesive.
Bioadhesives are being developed from other resources, such as algae and wood. But Oldham is unaware of anyone else trying to make adhesives from swine waste. He adds that it’s better to use swine waste because North Carolina produces so much of it and it has to go somewhere.
While bioadhesives can be used in a wide range of products that require an adhesive, Oldham sees the biggest opportunity in road construction and repair. Oldham estimates that 60 percent of the demand for adhesives is for asphalt. And these adhesives aren’t cheap. Because they’re made from petroleum, their price moves up and down with the changing price of crude.
Four million miles of highway
An estimated 8 billion gallons of petroleum are required each year to maintain 4 million miles of highway. U.S. hog farms produce about 6 billion gallons of swine manure a year. Beside turning what would otherwise be waste into a usable product, a swine waste-based bioadhesive would have other advantages. Oldham says the bioadhesive has better qualities than petroleum-based products and it can be produced at less cost. Asphalt binder costs between $2.50 and $2.59 a gallon. Oldham expects to sell the bioadhesive for about $2 a gallon. He’s already got a startup to do it.
Greensboro-based Bio-Adhesive Alliance incorporated in February. Oldham said that U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan approached his advisor Fini and told her that she wants North Carolina to be the first state to build “hog manure roads.” Bio-Adhesive Alliance plans to sell the product to adhesive companies, who in turn would distribute it to customers in the market, including companies in road maintenance.
Oldham’s project was judged the winner last week of the ACC Clean Energy Challenge. The business plan competition accepted entries from universities throughout the Southeast pitching proposals for new clean energy companies. For winning the challenge, N.C. A&T receives $100,000. The prize money will go a long way toward construction of a production facility. Oldham said Bio-Adhesive had already secured $50,000 toward the $200,000 total estimate for the plant.
“This $100,000 will put a dent in that,” Oldham said.
The timeline for starting production depends on when Bio-Adhesive Alliance can build the facility. Bids have been solicited. The company does have a location planned. It will be built at the Warsaw, N.C. headquarters of Murphy-Brown, the livestock production subsidiary of Smithfield Foods. The state’s largest hog producer, Murphy-Brown generates about 75,000 gallons of hog manure a day.
