MANURE: IT'S NOT JUST FOR SPREADING ANYMORE
Thursday, January 26th, 2006 -- 2:23 PM
Rarely has the topic of manure been so alluring. Rarely has manure been thought of as a commodity, but on January 31st, farmers and environmental organizations will gather in Madison to learn more about Manure BioConversion ? a process by which manure is used to produce electricity. The process sounds almost too simple to work: manure moves from a dairy barn into a pit of some kind, the temperature is regulated, bacteria grows and breaks down the manure creating methane gas, that gas is moved through a ?scrubber? to remove unwanted chemicals, and then run through a diesel engine that turns a turbine creating electricity.
"These digesters are capable of powering about 600 homes in a given year," says Matt Jorgensen, a livestock and dairy agent with the Clark County UW-Extension Office.
But there's a catch. The relatively new technology is expensive. At about $1.5-million a pop, anaerobic digesters are still cost-prohibitive for farms with fewer than 800 dairy cows.
"It doesn't make financial sense unless you're a really large farm," Jorgensen says. But, improvements to the technology are expected to change that.
"There is a lot of hope that with improvements to gas collection, gas efficiency, it might be affordable (for farms) down to 150 to 200 cows," Jorgensen says.
And with more than 63,000 dairy cows and more dairy herds than any other county in the state, Clark County might be uniquely positioned to utilize this technology.
A farm near Dorchester has already signed an agreement with a company to install a digester. "I know of a couple other farms that are actively looking - and probably getting close to signing agreements - to put methane digesters in," Jorgensen says.
There are about a dozen such digesters in operation in Wisconsin. With power being sold to power companies and pumped onto the grid, it takes around six-years to earn back that original investment.
Some studies have shown it may be cost-feasible for a power company to build a centrally-located facility that farmers could ship their manure to, but bio-security concerns have prevented it from happening, Jorgensen says.
On the web:
[url=http://www.datcp.state.wi.us/arm/agriculture/land-water/bioconversion_conference/index.jsp
]More on the meeting[/url]
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