Bio-Gas Methane Facility - Hooley Digester
Simple, cheap conversion of dairy farm waste to clean
electrical power & marketable by-products
The Port of Tillamook Bay has constructed a centralized methane digester to biologically process the manure from 4000 of the county's 30,000 dairy cows. The project has been 14 years in development as MEAD (Methane Energy and Agricultural Development). The facility, to be owned and managed by the Port, will utilize simple, proven cost-effective digester, solids separation and biogas-to-electricity technology currently being employed at over a dozen sites nationally.
Manure will be picked up by facility personnel, treated, and a portion returned to participating farms. Transportation costs will be offset by sale of electricity as "green power" and by sale of fiber recovered for use by a potting soil manufacturer. System benefits to the Tillamook community include: reductions in odors, pathogenic organisms, weedseeds, manure quantities and nutrients to be land-applied.
So how does it work? The technology has already been proven.
Waste products are placed in storage tanks where natural bacteria go to work producing biogases. It's a process called anaerobic digestion. Leftovers from this process are used as potting soil, while the methane generated is used to fuel a power generation plant.
In a place where the cows outnumber the humans, that's good news!
Two digesters are being constructed in the middle of an existing concrete pad. The digesters will be immediately adjacent to one another, sharing a long wall. The digestion and manure processing portion of the system will consist of:
- One manure collection tank, covered, with two days' holding capacity (30' X 30' X 14')
- Two concrete rectangular digester tanks with internal heating and insulation, a flexible impervious top, and sized for 20 day manure retention (approximately 140' X 30' X 14'), heated with waste heat (100° F)
- One concrete rectangular effluent storage tank, sized for four days' retention (approximately 27' X 60' X 14'), covered with a wooden deck
Just one Digester produces annually:
- Enough clean electricity for 150 average homes: $180,000 worth.
- 100 protected dairy industry, family-living wage jobs.
- Produces 23,000 tons of high-quality potting soil.
- Returns 17 million gallons of odor-free, pathogen-free liquid fertilizer to the farmers' fields.
- Eliminates ozone-damaging CO2
- Self-perpetuates by financing more digesters via its profits.
The original concept of one huge central digester has been revised and improved!
 The original $16 million county-wide plant would have:
- Been more expensive to build.
- Created long-haul transportation and fuel costs.
- Created a large debt service.
- Created high fees to the participating farmers.
Multiple, locally centralized digesters will:
- Cost only about $1 million each.
- Shorten transportation to quick, local-hauls.
- Minimal to no debt service.
- Eliminating fees to the farmers.
- Allow more farmers to participate.
- Allow alternatives and back-ups in flood and disaster times.
- Maintain uninterrupted methane and electrical production.
- Has proven very successful in other farming areas.
 Two digesters working will produce large enough profits to rapidly build the third, and so on . . . so the initial appropriation will kick-start a rapid, self-propagating cycle of:
- Increasing numbers of digesters . . .
- Resulting in increased methane production . . .
- Resulting in increased profits . . .
- Resulting in more digesters . . .
- Resulting in . . .
|
Passenger
