Methane, Cow Powered Dairies.

A Dutch Solution to an American Problem.

Like many farmers before him, Johan DeGroot had a problem. His problem was not due to climate, except indirectly, it was not due to money, except indirectly. His problems  are not due to all the weird and wonderful events that surround most of the agricultural lands in America these days, except in an indirect manner. The solutions themselves, as usual, could be found in financing, climate change, new policies, renewable energy and the willingness of people to work together for the good of the county.

Johan DeGroot’s problem is simple, he wants to expand, not in acreage but in number of cows. Like many dairy farms, and by extension any livestock farm, his acres are surrounded by communities that are becoming less and less enchanted by the effluent of farming. Johan runs the Sunshine Dairy farm, and would like to expand by implementing a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) on his land. His neighbors would also like to join the movement but they all face the same opposition because the more animals you put into the barn, the higher the nuisance value.

Johan’s neighbors started to complain, and with reason. What no one realized except this recent immigrant from Holland, was that his problem was also a gold mine from the old country. In The Netherlands, all farms have methanizers. This is due partly because of the nuisance value of large concentrations of animals around large concentrations of humans, and Holland is one of the most crowded countries on the planet. They started with banning the spreading of raw manure on the fields because of runoffs into the local streams, canals and the aquifer. That meant that the waste had to be treated and methanizers started to crop up all over the place as a system to just dry out the manure, which led to fertilizers in less noxious forms. Nevertheless, Holland is not a dry place, from almost constant rainfall to the fact that vast tracts of land are below sea level, it was almost impossible to keep the dried manure dry and in one place.

What really sparked the evolution of the methanizer was the fact that what was evaporating from the ponds and lagoons was almost pure methane gas, and that stuff is expensive to buy, to extract from the soil, and control. The farmers had an almost endless supply of the stuff, under domes and ready to be tapped. At first it was used in heating systems, but very soon the first electrical generators appeared, converted from diesel powered units, they were easily adapted to natural gas. The farms became energy independent and even faster they started to sell off the excess energy to the local utilities

Nowadays, on the bigger operations, it is not uncommon to see small CNG and LNG production units that compete in price against natural gas wells in Russia. The day President Putin shut off the gas; Holland was restricted but not shut down because they had their own supply. When Johan De Groot arrived in Indiana he was astounded that there were no methanizers in place, of course for four years he operated his father’s farm without them because Indiana is not Holland and what appeared to be wide open spaces soon became less wide open just about when he wanted to expand.

The math is simple. Each cow produces 22 tons of manure a year and a herd of more than 200 cows is ample production for self sufficiency in energy for the farm. Add ten time the number of animals and now you have a surplus in either methane, electricity or compressed gas to sell, to use or to barter.

We could provide up to 85% of the financing and more to design and create a methanizer facility using the latest technology and binding the different components into an energy production system that would add thousands of dollar, eliminate energy bills and serve as either a farm wide fuel production unit or even allow the farmer to co-op the operation between number of entities such as neighbors, the local town or even cooperation for an LNG facility to ship the result to their nearest distribution point.

The first shot has been fired and who dodges the bullet, who turns it into gold and who gets shot is up for grabs. The Federal District Court in Yakima Washington has ruled that Dairy Farms must manage their manure as if it was a hazardous waste, a danger to human health and the environment. The decision is on appeal and the war has just started, but clearly the question is not how to beat the rap, but how to profit from what will become a popular melody across the land.

In the case of Community Association for the Restoration of the Environment, Inc et al Versus Cow Palace LLC et al, the court clearly sides with the environment.  There will be the usual shucking and jiving in the upcoming trial, but the writing is on the wall and it says loud and proud, clean up your act, here are the standards.  This time we noticed the importance of nitrates in contaminating groundwater and drinking water

Our farms are, for the most part, far from innocent in the runoff destruction of the environment. It’s not just the dairies but also any place where large numbers of animals are brought together for profit. Cattle feeding stations, rendering facilities, dairies, chicken farms and pork production all act fast and loose with their manure, offal, cleaning and drinking water spreading them over fields, letting them slide off the land into the streams and rivers surrounding the farm.

Normally this would be a problem that could be solved with better management and more concerns and more cleaning water. California, the fruit and vegetable powerhouse of the country is facing its fourth year of drought. That means two things, the first is obvious, every drop is scanned, digested and bid on, from San Diego to Ukiah the word waste water is not acceptable around the family dinner table. The second result is that the natives are getting restless, from the Rio Grande which is no longer a Rio, to Sacramento River; anyone who pollutes, wastes or generally treats the stream like a dump will be in trouble.

Nowhere has the scanning of farmers been more acute than in the Golden State. Farmers, long the darlings of the environmental movement are being identified as the number one problem in water management in the country.  We use too much, and what we don’t use we pollute. Our crony-filled arrangements with water boards, politicians and financial institutions are being fine combed for the fleas and lice everyone expects to find.

Of course, as a farmer, you cannot afford the fifteen or twenty million dollars a decent clean up station will cost. But if you break down the problem you can look at the whole situation from a positive opportunity point of view. To start with, what the courts stated is that under certain conditions your manure and waste are dangerous, toxic substances. What the farmer knows is that without those products he would have a hard time growing crops.

What we all know is that farm waste is probably the most desirable commodity on the market for creating at least three large revenue streams. Before it even leaves the building, a new technology from Finland will remove the ammonia and convert it to solid nitrate fertilizers. Removing nitrates is the first step in sanitizing the waste stream because it is by itself the most lethal form of runoff poison that works its way into the ocean ruining rivers streams and lakes along the way, not to mention the air we breathe.

But the real gold is in the remaining manure. The pollutant is methane gas; it is locked into the waste, but comes out quite easily mostly just leaving it alone to certain conditions of temperature and concentrations. What you need is a methanizer, essentially a gas proof membrane over your manure pit that allows you to let the gas escape into a huge bladder, a metal dome or even a water pit.

As the gas rises it leaves behind some serious residue that can also be converted into a number of useful items from bedding to compost, dry bedding and compost of course. In the more modern units all this is done automatically which is very useful in the larger cattle and dairy operations. What it mostly leaves behind are the pollutants that are now the target of a number of lawsuits and litigation, new laws and some serious scientific and ecological studies.

First stop is the methane gas, that is nothing more or less than the natural gas you buy from the public utility to heat your barns, water and homes. If you have so much of it lying around, why not use it. Face it, it’s a huge bill you have to pay, it’s going to be almost as big as the bill you may get for trucking the wastes to a landfill by some outside company.

How can the gas best be used, luckily we are now in the glory days of renewable energy, the first thing you can do is run a turbine generator to power your whole operation. Diesel generators can be just as easily converted to gas as the major long haul trucks have done and a stationary generator has less hassles than a Mack truck sucking diesel.  A nice thing about electricity is that it is easy to share and to sell. Our advice is keep it close, the PUCs of California have some really interesting ways to make it unprofitable to tap into the grid and download your excess amperes. We visited a site that brought three farms together to share the electrical load, manure and other wastes in an interesting co-op setup where the total cost of both gas and electricity was less than $100 a month to run two medium sized dairies and a feedlot. That included habitation for three families with all the modern appliances we would expect.

Not interested in dealing in electrical power, the two next steps are called LNG and CNG, compressed natural gas and liquid natural gas are also options, LNG being the more expensive operation but has the highest resale value and it is quite transportable. Some LNG tankers are delivering our gas to China, does the word fracking ring a bell? Make no mistake; you are entering way beyond the silly world of PhotoVoltaic panels into an industrial production system of a highly valued commodity.

Cold feet? Well try what a few communities are starting to look at, city to farm cooperation. There are two kinds of methanizers, wet or dry. But there is no reason why the two cannot coexist. Your local town has huge mounds of waste that they are schlepping to landfills, those landfills are filling up rapidly and the only solution appears to be conversion.

Financing an industrial methanizer has never been easier, although you will have to look in some new places far afield. Forget the Federal and State Governments; they are a morass of conflicting programs, grants and technologies where you can spend months talking to people who have less of a clue than you do.  You may have to go as far afield as Europe for both the technology, the equipment and the funding and your accountant better have solid chops in EXIM Bank talk.