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Dalhousie Engineering PhD student Koushika Kumaresan is fascinated by manure...and how it can be transformed into something more valauble for the enviroment. That interest began while completing her undergraduate and master’s degree in agriculture on Dalhousie University’s Truro campus. There, she worked closely with animal waste and saw firsthand the impact it could have.

“I’ve always been interested in finding sustainable solutions, especially when it comes to manure management,” she says. “From the beginning, my goal was to work on projects that addressed sustainability.”

When it came time to pursue a PhD, there was no better place than Dalhousie Engineering. With its expertise in chemical engineering and renewable energy research, Koushika joined the Circular Process Engineering Lab under Dr. Khaled Benis. Although her academic background was in agriculture and plant science, she was still able to apply her skills to engineering solutions.

“It’s a challenge, but it’s also interesting,” she says. “In plant science, I already knew what to focus on, but in chemical engineering, everything is new, so I have to dig deeper and learn from scratch. That makes it more interesting.”

Turning Waste into Energy

Her research focuses on biomass pyrolysis, a process that converts organic waste into energy-rich products by heating it at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen. Using poultry manure as her feedstock, she’s studying how the process produces bio-oil, biochar, and pyro-gas, each with unique environmental benefits and energy applications.

“Biochar can be used to adsorb pollutants or as a carbon material,” she explains. “Bio-oil can be converted into biodiesel for transportation, and pyro-gas can be used to generate electricity after proper upgrading.”

Although chicken manure is commonly applied as fertilizer, untreated manure can cause serious environmental and health risks.

“Without proper treatment, it can cause issues like nutrient runoff, causing eutrophication, and it also produces greenhouse gases,” she explains. “Some of the nutrients and heavy metals can leach into the groundwater, which humans can consume, so there are several health-related and environmental issues.”

By converting manure through pyrolysis, Koushika says nutrients and metals can be stabilized, reducing harmful emissions and transforming waste into usable energy products.

Manure Pyrolysis Optimization

Of course, this is only the first stage of her research. Because not all poultry manure is the same, the next phase focuses on how different types of chicken manure respond to the pyrolysis process.

Koushika is comparing manure from broiler chickens, raised for meat, and layer chickens, raised for egg production, to understand how differences in composition affect the outcome. To do this, she runs controlled pyrolysis experiments while optimizing its key operating conditions, including temperature, heating rate, and the amount of time the biomass remains at high temperature.

By adjusting these parameters, she can evaluate how efficiently manure is converted into bio-oil, biochar, and pyro-gas, and how the quality of each product changes.

“Even small changes can affect the results,” she explains. “For example, how fast the temperature increases or how long the material stays at a certain temperature can influence how much bio-oil or biochar you get.”

Team Support

Koushika says her days are often spent alternating between hands-on experiments in the lab, analyzing data, troubleshooting equipment, and reviewing scientific literature.

“It’s not the same every day,” she says. “Sometimes experiments don’t give you the results you expect, but when things start working, it’s very rewarding.”

In fact, she says the entire experience has been a very rewarding one so far, crediting the team in the Circular Process Engineering Lab for supporting her throughout her journey.

I’ don't have a background in chemical engineering. I need more supervision than a normal chemical engineering graduate student would require,” she admits. “But everyone is ready to help whenever I need help, so that's a great thing.”

While her research is still in its early stages, Koushika believes it could lead to more sustainable ways of managing agriculture and producing energy.

“This project brings together everything I’ve been interested in since my undergraduate studies,” she says. “It’s about finding solutions that reduce harm, support sustainability, and turn waste into something useful.”