A meatpacking plant in Nebraska is going to reduce its waste footprint, its carbon footprint, and its cash outlays for for fuel and waste disposal, all at one stroke:
Construction of a biogas facility at the JBS Swift meat processing plant in Grand Island will begin Tuesday with a groundbreaking ceremony.
The project will convert paunch wastes and other meat byproducts into methane gas to fuel the plant’s boilers.
Environmental Power, the Portsmouth, N.H., corporation developing the project, said the methane gas will offset about 25 percent of JBS Swift’s annual purchase of natural gas and is the energy equivalent of 1.7 million gallons of heating oil per year.
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The biogas plant will consist of two 1.2 million-gallon anaerobic digesters, as well as a purification system that cleans the gas prior to its use. The digesters use bacteria to break down meat byproducts.
The anaerobic digester process captures methane — a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — and turns it into fuel. It also can be used to deal with human waste, and provides fertilizer as a byproduct as well as power — and since much of modern agriculture is based on petroleum-based fertilizers, anything that saves us from having to use oil to grow food is a good thing. Even better, the efficiency of the digestion is aided by the use of glycerol, which just happens to be a byproduct from biodiesel production.