Scientists from the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada (United States) report the production of biodiesel from feather meal. Feather meal is a protein rich by-product from poultry processing which can be used as animal feed and fertilizer. With a fat content of 2% to 12% (depending of feather type), feather meal may also be used as raw material in the production of biodiesel. (Chicken feather meal has a reported 11% fat content) The researchers used a simple process of extracting the fat in hot water (70^oC), and applied a conventional transesterification (fat/oil plus methanol) reaction to produce the biodiesel. According to researcher Narasimharao Kondamudi, "the laboratory process used would be applicable in the processing plant's rendering unit, removing it from the watery waste stream before it is baked and dried down into meal". The process could produce 7% to 11% biodiesel with ASTM quality specifications (cetane number and oxidation stability). The product was also comparable to biodiesel from other feedstocks. A technical paper describing the study is published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (URL above)..