Cow manure could offset 4 percent of US GHGs, power 9 million homes: report

The Institute of Physics’ Environmental Research Letters will publish a paper tomorrow: ‘Cow Power: The Energy and Emissions Benefits of Converting Manure to Biogas’, that concludes that anerobic digestion of cow manure could reduce up to 4 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions and provide 100 billion kilowatt hours of electric power, enough for 9 million homes.  The full article will be available tomorrow here

Recently, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have completed the first analysis of processing necessary to convert pig manure into a transport or heating fuel. The study used a pig manure based oil created by a team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that used heat and pressure to transform the manure into oil. NIST found 83 major compounds in the oil including a 15 percent water content and sulphur, both of which would need to be removed to make a feasible fuel.

In Texas, Environmental Power will break ground next week on a second manure-to-bioenergy plant which will be operated by its Microgy subsidiary. The plant will process waste from 10,000 cows into 635 billion BTUs of energy, enough to heat 11,000 homes for a year and replacing the equivalent of 4.5 million gallons of conventional liquid fuel. The Rio Leche facility will be constructed in Dublin and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2009. The firm’s Huckabay Ridge plant opened in Stephenville in 2008, and also handles waste from 10,000 cows. Completion is expected in late 2009.

Panda Ethanol is also on track to open a 100 Mgy ethanol plant in Hereford later this year that will gasify 1 billion pounds of manure to provide its power. The 40 foot high pile of manure feedstock will be housed in a barn. By co-locating the ethanol plant with cattle feedlots, the companies will be able to sell wet distillers grains, compared to investing in a drying process as Midwestern corn ethanol plants typically do. The CEO of Panda said that it also intends to earn and sell carbon credits obtained at its 115 Mgy ethanol plant in Hereford, Texas. The company said that the reductions and resulting emissions credits will come from using a cow manure power system in place of a traditional natural gas supply to power the ethanol distillation process.

Recently, Panda canceled a 100 Mgy ethanol plant that was scheduled for construction near Wallace. Last month, the company received the air quality permit for its 115 Mgy ethanol plant in Muleshoe. The Muleshoe plant will utilize up to 500,000 tons of cattle manure per year to generate biogas that will be used for steam generation.

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