If you ever watched the Fox television show “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?” you will know that a fifth grader is pretty smart these days. Further evidence of this is an article today in the Raleigh News & Observer about a fifth grader from Pinehurst, NC. Apparently fifth grader Nick Kuzma entered his findings on the use of poultry litter to break down oil into the N.C. Science and Engineering Fair and came out with an “Exemplary Project” award for his efforts. Nice job, Nick.

What Nick demonstrated is that poultry litter is pretty biologically active – a fact that explains why we manage poultry litter the way we do. We are careful to transport the litter in tightly-contained trucks and store all of the litter delivered to our plant in a fully enclosed Fuel Hall – under “negative pressure” to contain some of the products of this biological activity, like ammonia and “odor” components. We specifically plan for a certain amount of storage time in the Fuel Hall so that this activity will result in a better final fuel for our boiler.

While we are quite impressed with Nick’s findings, we just hope that we will not have to compete with this pretty smart fifth grader for the poultry litter we plan to use for our two plants in North Carolina.