The oilseed meal/livestock/manure relationship offers tremendous potential for realizing a vertical integration of seed to finished livestock and the production of energy out of animal waste is just a no-brainer. NRES is developing cost-effective systems for use in smaller applications where cost can be dramatically reduced compared to large, commercial systems. Despite their obvious value to Nebraska agriculture, poor electric buyback rates (NO net metering) and high capital investment has limited applications in the state to only one agricultural based unit with many municipal waste water facilities finding

At NRES, we feel we can do better than that and we are working to field simple and cost effective systems that can see broad application in Nebraska. We have visited methane digestion systems in India and have researched the farm scale work of Ram Bux Singh from the Gobar Gas Institute and have decided on a reactor design that will utilize the principles employed in thousands of digesters across India. On the Farm with chicken house collection in place, only the hogs will need to be included to feed this small unit, cow manure will not be collected for now.

A treasure trove of methane information was provided from the Center for Rural Affairs. This information and other is also available to interns and others for research and study purposes if needed.

One of our UNL students, Dave Dingman did a tremendous amount of work this past summer on the chicken house methane project and learned quite a bit in the process. Next swummers' internship should see this early work pay in a completed system.

Danny Kluthe at Olean Energy in Dodge, NE. can also provide consulting on reviewing the viability of the larger systems.

For mor information on biogas production, download our pdf (1.9 MB).