subject: Glycerol – An Effective Alternative Animal Feed [print this page] Glycerol An Effective Alternative Animal Feed
Nowadays, the demand of biodiesel has increased a lot which has resulted into the huge production of glycerol or glycerin as a byproduct. When refined a large part of this quantity goes to industrial manufacturers. The remaining part mainly gets wasted due to high costs of refining. This problem of wastage has created a lot of issues among biodiesel producers. In a bid to resolve this issues, various research programs have been conducted to bring out other possible uses of the chemical. Now it has been found that this waste may be used in agriculture and livestock as an alternative source of energy.
In the past few years, the prices of animal feed have increased a lot due to which livestock farmers are now looking for alternative feeds that will cost them less. A large number of pork producers are shifting to the employment of byproducts produced by bio-fuel manufacturers as source of alternative animal feed. Ethanol is one of these byproducts and widely used as an effective animal feed. Moreover, alternative sources do not depend on ethanol. As there is huge production of biodiesel, which means there is also a huge production of glycerol, the byproduct of biodiesel. The wasted product when nowhere found place now being used in livestock as an alternative energy source.
Generally, the commercial manufacture of biodiesel encompasses 100 pounds of fat or oil, which is mixed with 10 pounds of methanol. This generates output of 100 pounds of biodiesel. The remaining 10 pounds is crude glycerol. In this way, there has been huge production of several millions of tons of biodiesel which eventually results into manufacture of several hundreds of tons of crude glycerol. A large part of this is used in cosmetic and other pharmaceutical applications being used by people.
Nowadays, researchers are also working on a project deriving the possibility to test that the chemical can be actually used as an animal feed or at least an energy substitute for cows and pigs. Corn is considered as the major energy source employed by livestock growers. In a bid to figure out the possible advantage of glycerol, which emerges out as a potential alternative that is way cheaper, livestock owners are gradually turning to this option.
According to recent studies it has been found that the substance from biodiesel yields an amount of energy that is actually similar to that of corn. In association to this, people have been consuming the compound since its utilization in food and drugs.
