
Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications
Campus Units
Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2012
Journal or Book Title
Transactions of the ASABE
Volume
55
Issue
1
First Page
201
Last Page
209
DOI
10.13031/2013.41247
Abstract
Treating animal wastes through anaerobic digestion (AD) yields methane-rich biogas that can be used for power generation or heating, and a nutrient-rich digestate that can be land-applied as fertilizer. Furthermore, AD reduces odors from stored and land-applied manures. Despite these benefits, AD deployment rates in the U.S. are only 5% for dairy farms identified as suitable for AD by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The objective of this study was to analyze the economic and technical limitations of farm-scale anaerobic digesters using a simple model permitting insight into the fundamental constraints on the technology. A model was developed to determine the cost of methane produced via AD based on operation size. Dairy plug-flow systems were modeled because of their well-documented economic performance, and model validation used data from AgSTAR's FarmWare program. The analysis shows that farm size is critical to make digestion-derived methane cost-competitive with natural gas. At low herd sizes (<400 >animals), carbon credits and odor reductions alone appear insufficient to overcome the low commercial energy rates in the U.S. However, moderate reductions in digester cost and interest rate, coupled with moderate increases in amortization period and/or natural gas prices, could make AD more competitive with commercial energy in the U.S. even at relatively small herd sizes (approx. 400 animals).
Access
Open
Copyright Owner
American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers
Copyright Date
2012
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Faulhaber, Carol Rose; Raman, D. Raj; and Burns, Robert, "An Engineering-Economic Model for Analyzing Dairy Plug-Flow Anaerobic Digesters: Cost Structures and Policy Implications" (2012). Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications. 60.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_pubs/60
Included in
Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons, Agricultural Economics Commons, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons
Comments
This article is from Transactions of the ASABE, 55, no. 1 (2012): 201–209.