6,800 dairy cows in Blair and Bedford counties could soon be producing 2.5 megawatts of electricity a day, enough to power over 1,700 homes.

No, treadmills are not involved.

The proposed Cove Area Regional Digester will use manure from diary herds in an anaerobic digester to produce over 1 million cubic feet of methane biogas daily that will be used to fuel an on-site electrical generator and make soil treatment products.

There are few options for managing the over 380,000 gallons of liquid manure (200 tons of solids) that are produced every day in the Cove area of the Clover Creek Watershed.

Located in a karst geologic region, agricultural runoff has steadily increased nitrate levels in groundwater to the point that two of the four wells that supply Martinsburg Borough now require treatment because they exceed 10 mg/l drinking water standard for nitrates. In addition, private wells and water supplies have been affected by the runoff.

Faced with these concerns and changes in State Conservation Commission regulations setting a phosphorous standard for land applying manure, the Cove Area Regional Digester Project was formed as a non-profit group to develop a proposal for managing animal waste in the area.

The original partners in the project were the Southern Alleghenies Conservancy and the Southern Alleghenies Resource Conservation and Development Council which, through their Agriculture Today and Tomorrow Committee, developed the digester concept.

“A regional anaerboic digester with advanced technology was the only option that met all of our goals, while providing the agricultural community with a long-term solution to manure management” said Julie Dick, Project Manager with the Cove Area Regional Digester.

The Project established seven goals: remove manure from the farm; remove nitrates from the water effluent; produce electricity; produce bedding; provide nutrients in liquid form for return to the farm; process bio-solids and produce a marketable product; and be self-sustaining (i.e. make a profit).

Now in detailed design stage through Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. Engineers in State College, the Project has attracted considerable attention for its sustainable approach and integration of manure treatment and biosolids reuse. Overall, the estimate cost of the project is about $23 million with expected annual revenue of $ 1.7 million resulting from the sale of electricity, tipping fees for biosolids disposal, and sale of soil amendment products.

“The handling and treatment of this quantity of manure is very challenging.” said Jason Wert, of HRG, “It’s organically the equivalent of over 40 Million Gallons per Day of domestic wastewater, but has a tremendous amount of energy that can be recovered for a variety of uses. In order to harness this energy and cost-effectively treat the manure, we had to look to technologies outside traditional agricultural digesters and drew heavily upon the industrial and municipal communities’ experiences.”

The digester is expected to reduce ammonia gas loadings to the atmosphere by an annual amount of approximately 506,000 pounds; nitrogen loadings to groundwater and surface water by about 579,000 pounds a year; phosphorus loadings to groundwater and surface water by 25,000 pounds; create more than 17,000 tons of bedding or soil amendment products annually for resale within the community and outside the region; and produce approximately 2.5 Megawatts of power on a daily basis for resale and use within the community and outside the region.

Liquid manure taken to the facility will be processed to remove moisture to a point where it is at least 10 percent solids. Then it will go to an anaerobic digester with a capacity of about 1.2 millions. During a residence time of about twelve days, the manure will give off about 1 million cubic feet of biogas a day.

After processing, the digested solids are dewatered to improve its handling characteristics and reduce excess water content and dried for bedding, greenhouse potting soil, soil amendments and other products.

The digester will have the capability to receive municipal biosolids for drying and beneficial use. The drying technology is capable of rendering the material biological and pathogenically free, in compliance with EPA 503 Regulations to produce a Class A Biosolid. The biosolids will be handled in a completely separate process so the dewatered manure and dewatered biosolids are never co-mingled.

All wastewater on the site will be combined and treated using membrane bioreactors, supplemented with over 20 tons per day of pure oxygen, and will exceed both state and federal water quality standards for nutrient discharges. All waste sludge from the wastewater handling facilities will be reprocessed through the anaerobic digester.

The facility will have odor-control to contain and treat any off gassing from the treatment technologies, along with full site security, including fencing and closed-circuit television. Equipped with remote monitoring via Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system, the facility is highly automated and will require three to five full time personnel.

The detailed design of the facility should be completed by mid-2006 and the Project sponsors hope to arrange final financing and have a groundbreaking by early 2007.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates Pennsylvania has enough biomass power generation potential from wood, agricultural, industrial and urban residuals to generate 10.8 billion kWh of electricity a year, enough to meet the needs of over 1 million homes, or 26 percent of the Commonwealth’s electricity needs.

For more information on the project, contact Julie Dick, Project Coordinator, Cove Area Regional Digester, 814-693-4660 or email: CoveDigester@verizon.net or Jason Wert, PE, HRG Engineers, 814-238-7117 or email: jwert@hrg-inc.com.

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Biomass Spotlight: Pennsylvania

2/11/2005