Source: MEATINGPLACE, 1/5/16

A $120 million Smithfield Foods, Inc. animal waste-to-energy (WTE) facility in Missouri is on track to begin operations mid-year.

The project – encompassing nine Murphy-Brown LLC hog finishing farms across northern Missouri – consists of the installation of impermeable covers and flare systems on 88 lagoons at the farms. Each lagoon holds approximately 15 million gallons of manure. The covers trap biogas from the decomposing manure, which is then captured and purified on-site into 98-percent pure methane – clean enough to sell to national pipelines and burn as clean, natural gas.

The project, described as the largest livestock manure-to-energy project of its kind in the United States, will use enough manure to create 2.2 billion cubic feet of renewable natural gas (equivalent to 17 million gallons of diesel fuel each year).

St. Louis-based Roeslein Alternative Energy and Kennesaw, Ga.-based ABUTEC partnered to build the system: Roeslein is building a pressure swing absorption gas conditioning system to remove impurities, and ABUTEC will install 1.5-megawatt enclosed combustors to burn off waste gas at the lagoons, according to a report in PennEnergy.

“We've been able to re-stock some farms that had been idle. With [Roeslein Alternative Energy’s] help and their technology, we have since created more than 100 jobs for our grow-finish hog operation in Missouri," Blake Boxley, director of environmental health and safety for Smithfield Hog Production, said in a news release.

Duke Energy in North Carolina has agreed to purchase a portion of the renewable natural gas to help meet clean energy requirements for power generation.

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