Call it brown power.
Various agencies, including the government of Canada, Alberta Research Council, Highland Feeders Ltd. and its subsidiary, Highmark Renewables, hope to begin turning cattle manure into energy by June 2004.
The Integrated Manure Utilization System seeks to process the “high-solid” manure typical of most North American feedlots into fertilizer and reusable water, while capturing the methane gas that gets released in the process.
The pilot project at Highland Feeders feedlot near Vegreville, Alta., will feature two 15-metre high rubber-domed tanks or digesters in which manure and water will be mixed at 52 C, and the methane collected.
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The gas will be used to fire a generator expected to produce one million watts of electricity from the dung of 7,500 cattle.
The team hopes to be producing up to three million watts by June, enough to meet the energy needs of 5,000 people.
Bern and Mike Kotelko are principal partners in the project. They own Highmark Renewables and Highland Feeders feedlot. They see the opportunity as yet another means of diversification.
“It provides another opportunity for the livestock industry to diversify their revenue stream and be part of sustainable energy production,” said Bern Kotelko.
“It’ll be an important part of their system approach to running a business.”
Highmark Renewables is the only firm testing out this particular technology, Kotelko said. The $7.9 million project is funded largely with government money.
“With any new technology, you have to run it through the pilot stage. And if you’re going to develop that product line any further, you have to have some demo showcase, so that’s certainly what it is,” president Mike Kotelko said of Highmark Renewables.
“This is to refine and optimize the process, prove that it can work within this industry and other biomass industries.”
However, Chuck McBurney, reeve of Beaver County in Alberta, said the technology already exists and is being used on the Iron Creek Hutterite colony in his county, south of Bruce, Alta.
“Sometimes I think they’re out trying to reinvent the wheel,” said McBurney.
Iron Creek has been producing electricity and selling power to the grid for 22 months already, using three digestors.
The only difference between the two projects, McBurney said, is that Iron Creek uses a slurry of cattle, pig and chicken manure, rather than just cattle manure. And at Iron Creek, the Hutterites funded the project with no provincial or federal assistance.
McBurney mentions the various visitors, including senators and Alberta Research Council members, who have been out to see the Iron Creek project. Yet, that project received no money, and he can’t figure out why.
“It’s kind of funny when you’ve got one working out in the county, and a couple miles away they’re doing a pilot project on one. It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” McBurney said.
A project to turn manure into electricity and fertilizer is also under way near Cudworth, Sask.
