Poultry consumption is increasing globally and approximately 3.1 million tonnes of waste feathers are currently produced per annum in the EU. As a result, research investigating novel applications of waste feathers is increasing. Feathers have high tensile strength and toughness, extremely low density, excellent thermal insulating properties, hydrophobicity and are biodegradable. This research aimed to develop a feather waste conversion process that could produce new feather- derived materials containing high levels of feathers. The research has developed a new way of converting feathers that uses readily available industrial processes.
Abstract
The manufacturing method developed involves producing feather fibres followed by airlaid textile processing. This produces lightweight thermally insulating feather fibre materials. Producing nonwoven textiles from feather fibres allows the thermal insulating properties of feathers to be exploited and these have the potential to replace synthetic, non-biodegradable and non-renewable materials used in a range of applications. A large variety of nonwoven feather mats were manufactured, characterised and tested. Thermal insulation packaging was identified as the most appropriate product for nonwoven feather textiles. A thermally insulating feather-based packaging product (pluumo) was developed and a spin-out company (Aeropowder) was formed to commercially exploit the product concept.
Despite the excellent thermal performance of pluumo, the economic and environmental viability is uncertain because of the costs associated with washing and transporting waste feathers. This led to an assessment methodology to identify barriers to transitioning end-of-life materials into a circular economy. Applying the methodology to waste feathers showed that significant barriers exist including the need to develop commercially viable feather washing technologies.
The research demonstrates a new and potentially commercially viable process that produces materials that exploit the properties of waste feathers. New knowledge is associated with understanding the detailed processing requirements for feather textiles formed which can be used as sustainable thermal packaging.