Indiana Animal Waste Project Adds Two Anaerobic Digesters

Green Cow Power has added two anaerobic digesters to its facility in Goshen, Ind., to convert off-farm organic wastes and dairy manure into energy.

The facility is using two Chilton, Wis.-based DVO Inc. two-stage mixed plug flow digesters with a combined capacity of five million gallons, and they accept three semitrailers of manure daily, according to a news release.

The digesters produce enough biogas to power three 1050-kilowatt engines. The leftover liquid from the digester goes to a lagoon for storage and ultimately is used as a fertilizer for crops. The operation uses digested solids as cow bedding.

DVO said the Goshen facility is the eighth largest digester operation in Indiana.

At the facility 80 percent of the waste going to the digester is off-farm organic waste such as food processing and biodiesel processing waste. The remaining 20 percent is dairy manure collected from five dairies within a three-mile radius.

The Martin and Furrer families own Green Cow Power. Brian Furrer also owns and operates BioTown Ag in Reynolds, Ind., a facility with three DVO digesters. BioTown generates more than six megawatts of electricity from food processing and animal wastes, enough to power the town of Reynolds.

“It’s an honor to work with Brian Furrer on a second digester project in Indiana,” said DVO President Steve Dvorak.

In other recent animal waste projects, St. Louis-based Roeslein Alternative Energy is constructing a $120 million animal waste-to-energy (WTE) operation in Missouri that should begin operations by mid-2016. It will generate renewable natural gas from several of food producer Smithfield Foods Inc.’s Missouri farms.

Bio-Adhesive Alliance is making shingles from manure. California has awarded grants to install digesters and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at five dairy operations. And Cargill is using poultry manure to produce energy in a project with the Irish Agri-Tech company BHSL.