NEWS: Manure Studied as a Plentiful Fuel Source - Houston Chronicle

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Houston Chronicle Aug. 20, 2005

 

MANURE STUDIED AS A PLENTIFUL FUEL SOURCE

 

High oil prices push researchers to look beyond fertilizer as a use for

cow pies

 

*By BETSY BLANEY*

 

 

*Associated Press*

 

Soaring oil prices and government incentives are fueling increased

interest in renewable energy sources such as cow manure.

 

And what better place to do manure research than in the Texas Panhandle,

which holds the aromatic distinction of being the country's biggest

producer of cow pies in a state that leads the country in cattle production.

 

For years, researchers have studied manure as a fertilizer. Now,

however, they are focusing on developing other uses for the abundant

substance as the livestock industry grows and fertilizer's role

diminishes. State and federal energy bills also call for increasing

renewable energy sources.

 

Cattle manure can be used as fuel instead of coal or natural gas to

create steam to run turbines, which create electricity.

 

That's how The Panda Group of Dallas plans to fuel a $120 million

ethanol plant set to open next year in Hereford. The company said it

will realize an energy savings equivalent to 1,000 barrels of oil per

day by turning manure and cotton-gin waste into clean-burning fuel to

power the plant.

 

"I see it as a valuable tool in our tool box," John Sweeten, resident

director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Amarillo, said

of cattle manure's energy potential.

 

"Sixty-dollar-a-barrel oil recruits a lot of interest in biomass,"

Sweeten said. "At $10-a-barrel oil, there's not much interest."

 

Biomass is renewable organic matter, such as manure and crops including

corn, grain sorghum and soybeans, all of which can be processed into

ethanol.

 

"Anything that's renewable and is at least competitive with other

prices, it's better for everybody," said Donald L. Klass of the Biomass

Energy Research Association in Washington.

 

The potential for surplus manure stems from more cattle, dairy cows and

hogs coming to the Panhandle, and farmers moving toward planting more

dryland crops, which demand less fertilizer.

 

 

 

STUDYING THE PROCESS

 

Researchers at a feedlot are trying to figure out the best process and

mix to create the most usable heat and energy.

 

A future research project will examine using manure from dairy cows,

Sweeten said, which, like swine manure, requires a different process to

capture the energy.

 

But cattle for meat outnumber other concentrated animal-feeding

operations in the Panhandle. Nearly 5 million head of cattle come to

about 100 Panhandle feedyards each year.

 

While there, they produce billions of pounds of manure.

 

"It's almost too good not to use," said David Parker, a professor of

agriculture at West Texas A&M University.

 

The experiment station's feedlot study involved taking cattle-manure

samples from pens with different floors.

 

One set of pens was paved with fly ash, a by-product of the coal-fired

power generating industry; the others had dirt floors.

 

In a sampling taken this summer, manure composted from the dirt-floor

pens had more unusable material (59 percent) than that from the

fly-ash-covered pens (20.2 percent). That means the pens paved with fly

ash had more than twice the usable biomass from which to create energy.

 

But not many pens in commercial feedlots have fly-ash floors in pens.

 

"The trick is to recover the biodegradable and leave the dirt in the

ground as it is," Klass said.

 

 

 

BEST USED REGIONALLY

 

Sweeten said manure contains at best about a third to a quarter of the

energy value as coal so "you don't get as much bang for your buck,

literally."

 

That makes transporting manure far from where it's produced impractical,

so Sweeten said manure-generated energy would be used only regionally.

 

Large bulk samples from a composting manure pile from the fly-ash pens

will be tested further in a small-scale combustion-testing project in

College Station.

 

"I see it as something that can enhance our portfolio of renewable

energy, but it can also help us on manure management," Sweeten said.