Waste to energy close to home

After looking all over the web to try to find waste to energy plants, turns out I was looking to hard.  This weekend I found out a feedlot (Teague Diversified) from my home town has been operating an anaerobic digester to produce electricity for several years now.  After talking with my father about my Science Communication class I am currently in and my blog on waste to energy, he informed me about this certain feedlot and the process they implemented several years ago to produce electricity from cow manure.  

After talking to my father about the technology for a while we got to looking on the internet and came across an article that provided more details on the Teague Diversified biogas generation process.  The information is a little out dated, from Aug. 2005, but provided good information about the basic inputs and outputs of the process.

The feedlot which feeds around 20,000 to 25,000 head of cattle had used the wastes produced to make compost.  After noticing all of the fumes coming off of the piles of compost the owner decided to look into anaerobic digestion to capture and use this energy. The above ground digesters that were installed cut the processing time of around 20 days to 5 days to take raw cow manure mixed with water to a natural gas like product biogas.  The feed goes in with a concentration of solids around 12 to 15 and leaves with a 4 to 6 percent concentration of solids.

One good thing about the process that was implemented is that it can be added onto down the road. Teague has plans to build and operate up to 12 of these above ground digesters, each capable of producing 1 to 2 MW of electricity.  With a total input of just 500 kW, they can expect to produce up to 8 MW of electricity.  They have set up an agreement with the local power provider, Morgan County REA, where they will buy the generated electricity at a rate of 3 to 4 cents per kWh produced.  If the system is to reach the production of 8MW a sub station will have to be built.  

I hope to talk with the owner of Teague Diversified here in the near future to get more information and updates on the process.  Stay tuned as I plan this should open up many great opportunities and be a great resource for information on the waste to energy process.  The picture below is showing the construction of one of the digesters being installed at Teauge Diversified.