A patented psychrophilic (low temperature) sequential-batch anaerobic digester installed by Revolution Energy Solutions at Lochmead Farms near Junction City, Oregon, processes manure from 750 cows into 1.5 MW of power.

In addition to dairy digesters, some operated as codigesters, two projects in development are designed to process source separated food waste streams.

Dan Sullivan

BioCycle March 2012, Vol. 53, No. 3, p. 33

Washington, Oregon and Idaho are experiencing an uptick in on-farm anaerobic digestion projects, with a total of 13 manure-based digesters between them (USEPA AgSTAR data). Additional farm digester projects are in development.The Northwest also will soon be home to a number of digesters being designed and built primarily to process food waste streams. These include Columbia Biogas in Portland, Oregon, and Green Lane Energy outside of Junction City, Oregon. This roundup features a few of these new and developing projects in the Northwest region.

Recently Operational

Lochmead Farms, Inc./Revolution Energy Solutions

“They’re the kind of guys that make changes in American agriculture.” So says Alan Tank of Revolution Energy Solutions, which installed a patented, psychrophilic (low temperature), sequential-batch anaerobic digester on Lochmead Farms, a 3,000-acre, 750-cow dairy operation near Junction City, Oregon, owned by Buzz and Jock Gibson, brothers and third-generation farmers. “We design, build, own and operate,” explains Tank, a managing partner who has been involved in agriculture and food production his whole career. “We understand that every dairy or other livestock farm in the United States already has a complex manure management system that is existing and paid for,” he says, therefore to make AD projects work they must enhance what’s already in place. “We say, ‘We’re going to bring all capital, we want you to bring the feedstock.’ That’s the premise we start with.”………..

……….. Funding for the $2.2 million project included Oregon’s Business Energy Tax Credit (BETC) program, which can cover up to half of eligible project costs, and federal 1603 Treasury Grant funds, which can cover up to a third of eligible costs. Since some of those “eligible costs” overlap and can’t be funded twice, “you get cut one way or the other,” notes Tank.

Farm Power Rexville in northwestern Washington state is one of five on-farm anaerobic digester projects that brothers Kevin and Daryl Maas have online or on the drawing table in the Pacific Northwest.

Farm Power

Farm Power Northwest, LLC, has five major anaerobic digester (AD) projects online or in the works in the Pacific Northwest. These include Farm Power Rexville and Lynden in Washington State, with Rainier Biogas under construction, and Farm Power Tillamook and Misty Meadow under construction in Oregon. In 2007, brothers Kevin and Daryl Maas founded the company, which uses a community based build-own-operate project development model.

Farm Power Rexville encompasses a 750 kW mixed plug-flow digester served by a total of 1,500 cows on two adjacent farms. Farm Power Linden is similarly configured, only it serves 2,000 cows, and one of the partnering farms heats a 3-acre greenhouse with waste heat from the generator set. Both are codigestion projects that take in food waste. Rainier Biogas near Enumclaw, Washington, was set up to manage the waste of 1,400 cows on four neighboring dairy farms and specifically to capture and export nitrogen and phosphorous out of a sensitive watershed…….

……Another challenge in Oregon has been the dropping price point of electricity. About 50 percent of the region’s electricity comes from hydro, and it’s relatively inexpensive. “We moved into Oregon knowing the prices of power [5-6 cents/kWh] were lower than in Washington,” he notes. “That’s why we focused on just these two projects. If we were out there to really push the envelope, I think the falling power prices would have clobbered us.”

Farm Power Tillamook is a 1,000 kW mixed plug-flow digester designed for 1,800 cows on three neighboring farms and is scheduled to begin producing electricity sometime in April 2012. Just a few miles away, Farm Power Misty Meadow represents the third digester project in Tillamook County and the second owned by Farm Power. “Both of these projects are within a mile of downtown Tillamook,” says Maas. “It’s great to be there and great to have the community support the dairy industry. It’s important to us to be in a place where they want dairy farms to stick around … and it’s better for stakeholder engagement.”

Start-Up Phase

Rock Creek Dairy/New EnergyOne, LLC

Three adjacent dairy farms in Filer, Idaho, owned by Bettencourt Dairies and operated under the name Rock Creek Dairy, will supply manure to a new anaerobic digester project being developed by New Energy One, LLC. The project will utilize digester technology from Northern Biogas of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and will be operated under contract with New Energy One by Standley & Co. of Jerome, Idaho. It will treat manure from 8,900 cows. Northern Biogas is supplying six approximately 1 million gallon vessels; five will be used to process the manure and one will be available for experimentation and research……..

…….Installed capacity of the project is 3 MW. “We are putting in two Caterpillar G3520 units,” says Kesting, adding that since Western States is a Caterpillar dealer the company was able to use CAT nonrecourse project financing and thereby minimize financial risks. New Energy One has signed a power-purchase agreement with Idaho Power. The project represents the fourth digester in Idaho’s Magic Valley. The first manure was added to the tanks in early February. Initial energy production is scheduled for March and full-scale operation is expected by August 2012.

Heat from the engines is being used to heat the digesters. A chemical separator is being installed for phosporus removal. “Chemical polymers sequester the phosphorus, and it stays with the fiber as opposed to going back to the lagoon,” he explains. “We’re able to pull out about 85 to 90 percent of the phosphorus.” There are currently no plans to process any off-farm organics. “Part of the permit with the county states that any outside organics have to be approved by the county,” Kesting says.

Development And Construction

Columbia Biogas

A $55 million biogas facility on an 11-acre site within the city of Portland, designed to provide 4.2 MW of power at build-out, is on track for an August 2013 startup. “We have our permits with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, have a solid waste franchise agreement, air quality permits from the state of Oregon and have had a preapplication meeting with the city of Portland for construction,” explains project engineer Dale Richwine.

A Good Neighbor Agreement with local residents provided a means to incorporate input from the community into the design. The facility will provide up to 15 full-time jobs. In order to secure Section 1603 Treasury Grant funds, Columbia Biogas had to invest at least 5 percent of project costs in order to qualify for “Safe Harbor” before that potential funding stream — for up to 30 percent of eligible costs — expired at the end of 2011. “We actually purchased our tanks last December, and they will be delivered in April to our warehouse,” says Richwine. A final hurdle is securing a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) from the general contractor, hand-in-hand with finalizing financing.

Phase I of the project will involve processing 100,000 tons annually of mixed food waste, industrial solids and liquids from local industry, along with grease trap waste……

“We plan to break ground in June of this year,” he notes.

……The biggest challenge fitting a biogas project into an urban setting is to make it cost-effective, says Richwine. “You can’t land apply the digestate, and you have to treat the liquids so they can be discharged to the sanitary sewer.” To tackle both environmental and economic concerns, the project will enlist such technologies as ammonia stripping in order to both create value-added products (e.g., ammonium sulfate and calcium carbonate) and minimize impacts to the local sewer system.

Green Lane Energy

A $13 million bioenergy plant near Junction City, Oregon, will turn waste straw, commercial organics such as vegetable and fruit waste and FOG (fat, oils and grease) collected from the city of Eugene, and livestock manure from area dairies, into 1.6 MW of electricity through anaerobic digestion. Funding for the project includes $2 million from the Energy Trust of Oregon, a nonprofit that channels public-purpose funds collected from ratepayers within the service territory of investor-owned utilities to energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Funding also included a 1603 Treasury Grant for up to a third of eligible project costs, a 1605 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant, a $3 million renewable energy grant from the state of Oregon and a $1.725 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The projected return on investment is 10 years. The project will utilize continuous-stirred reactor wet digester technology supplied by Entec biogas Gmbh and a Caterpillar genset. It is being designed and engineered by ECOregon and Evergreen Engineering, respectively.

The industrially zoned site sits adjacent to 10,000 acres of broad-scale agriculture, mostly grass seed production, says project engineer Dean Foor. All permits are in place and excavating has begun, but construction was stalled due to some initial cost overruns. Concrete work is now scheduled to begin in April. …….

…….. “All supply and off-take agreements are in place,” says Foor, also commenting on the chicken-and-egg nature of getting feedstock agreements in place prior to project completion. “It’s incredibly painful to build the relationship with folks who supply that material in a way that they believe you are going to accomplish something that hasn’t been done before, and that they should contractually obligate themselves to that.”…

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