Scientists to scale up production of factory-grade cellulose from cow dung
26 May 2025
University scientists have created a technique to turn cow dung into manufacturing grade cellulose.
The material is a mainstay of several process engineering sectors and is used in the production of both food packaging, pharmaceuticals and surgical masks.
Now, researchers from UCL in collaboration with Teesside and Edinburgh Napier universities colleagues have made novel use of industrial ‘pressurised spinning’ to extract cellulose strands from bovine dung.
The technique employs simultaneous pressure and rotation to spin fibres, beads, ribbons, meshes and films from a liquid jet of soft matter.
The spinning technology has been in existence since its invention by a team led by UCL professor of mechanical engineering Mohan Edirisinghe in 2013.
However, Edirisinghe, who was senior author of the latest study, said initial efforts to apply it to extracting the cellulose in cow manure were unsuccessful.
“By a process of trial and error, we figured out that using a horizontal rather than a vertical vessel containing surface nozzles and injecting the jet of liquid into still or flowing water caused cellulose fibres to form,” he explained.
“We were then able to change the consistency of the liquid to create other forms, such as meshes, films and ribbons, each of which have different manufacturing applications. We’re still not quite sure why the process works, but the important thing is that it does.”
First author Yanqi Dai, also from UCL's mechanical engineering department, said the environmental benefits would benefit dairy farmers by reducing disposal cost and boosting income.
“Horizontal nozzle-pressurised spinning could be a huge boost to the global dairy farming industry, by putting this problematic waste product to good use and perhaps creating a new source of income,” she predicted.
Writing in The Journal of Cleaner Production, the academics said the technique also offered the chance to combat pollution and health issues caused by the rapidly growing global manure surplus.
Professor Edirisinghe assessed it would be “fairly easy” to boost production using existing pressurised spinning technology, so providing a potentially cheaper method of factory standard cellulose at scale.
The pressurised spinning research carried out at UCL was subsidised with grants awarded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
