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Friday's Internet Edition, November 21, 2008.
Cal-Denier Dairy Manure Digester Project Dedication takes place
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Photo Kerensa Uyeta-Buckley
A cow munches on some food on Fred Denier’s dairy farm. Manure from the 500 cows on the farm is being turned into electricity with the lagoon digester that turns manure into biogas.
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By Kerensa Uyeta-Buckley
Staff Writer
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Although it may not be the most appreciated of the Earth’s renewable resources, cow manure took center spotlight July 24 with the dedication of the Cal-Denier Dairy Manure Digester Project Dedication at Denier’s dairy farm.
The dedication marked the beginning of a joint effort between Fred Denier and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to provide energy through the production of methane from cow manure on the farm.
“I think it allows us to capture a resource that, up until this point, has gone untapped,” Fred Denier, owner of the 500 milk cow dairy farm on Arno Road.
Denier, along with Ruth MacDougall of SMUD and representatives from RCM International and I Power, were on hand at the dedication ceremony and helped describe the digester-to-energy process.
The digester project uses cow manure as a natural way to produce electricity.
At the same time, farmers benefit through extra revenue from the sale of electricity, and by capturing methane emissions that are 22 times as potent as carbon dioxide in changing the global climate, according to SMUD.
The project will generate enough electricity to pay for the dairy’s power usage as well as generating extra power for sale.
To create methane, cow manure is flushed from cow stalls into a pump that separates liquid and solid manure.
The liquid manure is then moved to the digester, which is lined and covered with high density polyethylene plastic and is 389 feet by 162 feet and 24 feet deep, according to SMUD.
Manure stays in the digester for about 40 days, decomposing and forming biogas.
The gas is then sent to a 65-kilowatt base load engine generator, according to SMUD.
The digester was built by RCM International, which has been building digesters since 1982 in places including Lodi, New York, and Colorado.
The digester system cost approximately $700,000 and is expected to pay off in about seven years, according to SMUD.
Denier was approached by SMUD in 2004 along with several other dairy farms in the area, about the idea of a digester project.
SMUD’s Dairy Digester Incentive Program provided net metering at all farm meters at retail rates, which is about 10 cents per kilowatt.
In addition, it provided a 13 percent capital cost incentive to match a USDA Rural Development grant and 50 percent of the USDA grant application costs, as well as help in other areas.
“While this project is of moderate size, it demonstrates how we can use a renewable green source of power,” Denier said at the close of the dedication ceremony.
One cow produces 120 pounds of manure and urine a day.
Besides producing energy, the digester will also reduce the need for commercial fertilizer, since digested liquid waste is a good method for crop fertilization.
The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Western United Resource Development, administering funding from the California Energy Commission.
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