Is Anaerobic Digestion Profitable?

In the dairy industry, the production of biogas can be profitable, even for small farms

Dairy farms must deal with wastewater that’s particularly high in organic matter and that can be challenging to deal with. However, establishing an on-farm anaerobic digestion plant that generates biogas from cattle slurry offers several benefits:

• It captures methane and converts it into a renewable source of energy that can be used to replace fossil fuels used for heating or as a source of electricity.
• It prevents methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from escaping into the atmosphere.
• Digestate, the wet material left over from the digestion process, can be processed for use as a natural fertilizer to replace carbon-rich chemical fertilizers. This fertilizer is more eco-friendly than undigested cattle slurry because weed seeds, pathogens, and odor-generating bacteria are killed in the AD process, and nitrate pollution of waterways is reduced.

The initial investment required to establish an on-site anaerobic digestion plant on smaller dairy farms may pose a challenge to farmers and may not be recouped that readily. But if farmers do their homework, anaerobic digestion can still be a viable proposition.