Burning Bio News

BioCycle Magazine compares the feasibility of two, commercial food waste anaerobic digesters. The article outlines some major considerations such as feedstock quality and sourcing, financing considerations, and markets.

Fuel from Aquatic Biomass, Santa Rosa, CA, demonstrates the ability of native water plants to scrub residual pollutants and endocrine disrupters from treated wastewater and then be harvested to produce methane in an anaerobic digester. Students from Sonoma State University diverted secondarily treated wastewater into ditches and planted natives like marsh pennywort, Azola (mosquito fern), duck weed and algae. With demonstrable scrubbing results from the aquatic biomass in place, Fuel from Aquatic Biomass now moves on to the methane production phase.

Funding is available from four USDA Rural Development renewable energy programs authorized by the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Farm Bill). USDA is accepting applications for grants and loan guarantees in the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) until June 30, 2010. In fiscal year 2009, this program helped fund 1,485 REAP projects in 50 states, the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Western Pacific Islands.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced a new interagency agreement promoting renewable energy generation and slashing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock operations. The agreement expands the work of the AgStar program, a joint EPA-USDA effort that helps livestock producers reduce methane emissions from their operations.

USDA will begin conducting the first national On-Farm Energy Production Survey this week. The most recent agriculture census counted more than 20,000 farms and ranches that were producing renewable energy via solar panels, wind turbines and methane digesters. USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is mailing the survey forms to farm and ranch operators nationwide who indicated on the 2007 Census of Agriculture that they were generating renewable energy.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced the award of $11.3 million to help develop and commercialize 25 innovative renewable energy and energy storage projects. The money will be allocated as $4.7 million for demonstration projects (5), $4.1 million for new product development (7), and $2.6 million for feasibility studies (13). These resources will leverage $11 million of private sector investment to bring total funding for these projects to $22 million.

A new Cayuga County (NY) digester facility on County House Road in Sennett, NY will convert manure into energy that will heat nearby county buildings. The Cayuga County Soil and Water Conservation District will begin building the $9.5 million dollar sustainable-energy digester plant later this month. Soil and Water received about $6.2 million in federal stimulus money — nearly double the amount it anticipated — and about $3.5 million in federal and state grants and aid. –mj: I have a soft spot in my heart for community digesters, but am not sure how $10 million dollars of public benefit will be generated from the 10 million of public cost?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Awards for sustainability to each of two Clarkson University (NY) teams that participated in the Sixth Annual National Sustainable Design Expo on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The first Clarkson project, “Farm Waste to Energy: A Sustainable Solution for Small-Scale Farms,” optimizes viable anaerobic digester technology for diary farms in cold climates with 50 or fewer cows. The second team project, “Sustainable Year-Round Food Production in Cold Climates,” includes the design, feasibility, analysis, and impact assessment of a pilot controlled-environment, high rise farm. Each team will receive a $75,000 grant from the EPA to further develop their design, implement it in the field, or move it to the marketplace.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland visited the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center on the Wooster, OH, campus recently to see first-hand the anaerobic digester Cleveland-based quasar is building there. The digester will turn agricultural and other waste streams into methane that can then be used to generate electricity, thermal heat, natural gas or vehicle fuel. The 550,000-gallon digester that will be able to process 30,000 wet tons of biomass annually with more than 750 kW of electrical generation capacity.

The Augusta (GA) Commission is exploring the investment of $20 million to make pipeline-quality compressed natural gas from methane generated at the landfill. The compressed natural gas will be used to power the fleet of garbage trucks that feed the landfill.

West Lampeter Township, Landcaster County, PA, is being courted by a company that wants to build a $45 to $50 million bug-based anaerobic manure digester system to pump out “green” electricity for up to 30 farms. In exchange for manure from poultry and pigs, farmers would get free power, free odorless fertilizer and a modest lease payment. Cow manure would not be used, at least initially, because it is often mixed with straw.

The parent company of the AB Foods-Washington Beef processing plant in Toppenish, WA, has won $2 million in grants and loans to create a biofuels company that will transform waste into diesel. AB Bioenergy will use the money to build a biofuels facility later this year in a yet-to-be determined Central Washington location. After it ramps up in the spring of 2011, the plant is expected to create 16 new jobs.

The Frontier Dairy is planning a 10,000 cow facility near Edgeley, ND. In addition to the milking cows it would also have another 2,000 dry cows and 16,000 heifers on the premises. Output from the operation would average 800,000 pounds of milk per day. The operation will contract with local farmers for about 9,000 acres of corn chopped for silage. That corn will be chopped over a two-week period each fall and piled on a 25-acre asphalt slab outdoors. The farms methane digesters will be partly owned in conjunction with Great River Energy. The solids from the digester are dried and used for bedding within the farm or pressed into briquettes sold to power companies to burn with coal. The liquid waste will be spread out over about 4,000 acres of farm land.

Gill’s Onions generates 300,000 lbs/day of residuals from the processing of fresh-cut onions. With an annual disposal bill of $500,000, it opted to install an AD system to treat the waste on-site and utilize the biogas. Onion waste is now an asset at Gill’s Onions in Oxnard, California, where a $9.5 million project is converting onion waste into renewable energy and cattle feed. The biogas powers two 300-kW fuel cells generating 0.6 MW of electricity to satisfy 75 percent of Gill’s base load power requirements. The fuel cells, supplied by Fuel Cell Energy in Danbury, Connecticut, operate on biogas and natural gas.

A Cargill built and operated anaerobic digester on the Bettencourt Dairy B6 Farm, in Idaho, is now converting manure from the farm’s 6,000 cows into 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. The electricity is sold to the local power grid. The project builds on the success of a Cargill anaerobic digester operating since 2008 on another 10,000-cow Bettencourt Dairy farm nearby.

Scientists at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands have discovered bacteria that can produce oxygen by breaking down nitrite compounds, a novel metabolic trick that allows the bacteria to consume methane found in oxygen-poor sediments. When the team gave the bacteria nitrates, a common oxygen-bearing component of fertilizers, no methane was consumed. But when nitrites, close chemical relatives of nitrates, were added to the mix, the bacteria fed on the methane and released nitrogen gas. That combination suggests that the microbes were breaking down nitrites, using the oxygen to consume the methane and releasing nitrogen as waste.

A new study from the National Research Council, “Verifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Methods to Support International Climate Agreements,” concludes there is not a sufficiently accurate way to verify the self-reported estimates against independent data. In addition, the report found there is no accurate way “to estimate other greenhouse gas emissions” – a matter of key importance to agriculture since the Environmental Protection Agency says the livestock is the main emitter of methane, a greenhouse gas.

Wisconsin’s secretary of agriculture announced a $200,000 grant Friday to help a Tomah (WI) manufacturer develop a manure digester that could help small farms turn waste into electricity. USEMCO has developed a tank that makes it economical for farms with as few as 100 cows. The first model will be tested on a 150-cow Chaseburg dairy. USEMCO’s funding was part of $3.5 million in competitive agriculture grants announced Thursday by Gov. Jim Doyle. Most of that money will go to support a $47.2 million expansion at a Foremost Farms plant in Appleton.

Chautauqua County (NY) Executive Gregory J. Edwards was on hand as the engines inside the County’s Methane-Electric Plant underwent their first, full capacity test February 12. The landfill gas powered generator has a capacity of 6.4 megawatts of electricity will result in a profit of over $2 million per year to the county.

Greeley Colorado is pursuing plans to construct a waste-to-energy facility that would utilize local agricultural and food processing waste streams to produce biogas for electricity generation. According a recently completed feasibility study, conducted by Symbios Technologies LLC, the most manageable and profitable scenario for a first-phase Greeley Clean Energy Park project would be a 2-megawatt anaerobic digester with a combined-heat-and-power unit for electricity generation, capable of processing more than 500 tons per day of waste from three main waste sources—cow manure from a JBS feedlot, and waste from Leprino Foods Cheese Plant and the city water pollution control facility.