Dairy business powered by cow poop

NY Times:

Here at one of the largest dairy farms in the country, electricity generated using an endless supply of manure runs the equipment to milk around 30,000 cows three times a day.

For years, the farm has used livestock waste to create enough natural gas to power 10 barns, a cheese factory, a cafe, a gift shop and a maze of child-friendly exhibits about the world of dairy, including a 4D movie theater.

All that, and Fair Oaks Farms was still using only about half of the five million pounds of cow manure it vacuumed up from its barn floors on a daily basis. It burned off the excess methane, wasted energy sacrificed to the sky.

But not anymore.

The farm is now turning the extra manure into fuel for its delivery trucks, powering 42 tractor-trailers that make daily runs to raw milk processing plants in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Officials from the federal Department of Energy called the endeavor a “pacesetter” for the dairy industry, and said it was the largest natural gas fleet using agricultural waste to drive this nation’s roads.

“As long as we keep milking cows, we never run out of gas,” said Gary Corbett, chief executive of Fair Oaks, which held a ribbon-cutting event for the project this month and opened two fueling stations to the public.

“We are one user, and we’re taking two million gallons of diesel off the highway each year,” he said. “That’s a big deal.”

The switch comes at a time of nascent growth for vehicles that run on compressed natural gas in the United States, as some industries — particularly those that require long-haul trucking or repetitive routes — have started considering the advantages of cheap natural gas, close to half the price of a gallon of diesel fuel for the same amount of power.

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Turning a waste problem into an asset is smart business.  It did require a $12 million investment in a "digester" to extract the natural gas from the poop.  The remaining waste is still spread as fertilizer.   They are now selling the excess gas to other fleets that can run their vehicles on compressed natural gas.