Farm Uses Cow Manure to Provide Electricity for Their Buildings

A Dairy farmer in Pennsylvania is saving $200,000 a year by recycling cow manure to power his farm. He owns 600 cows so the manure piles up quickly and he says it’s a fairly easy process to convert the manure to run his four generators that run the farm.

He has a 19,000 gallon tank that the manure is dropped in to and then moved to a ‘digester’ that is 16 feet deep and 70 feet in diameter. The manure is heated making the bacteria break down to organic matter, and that produces methane gas which is burned in the generators. The heat that heats the manure has a second function; it heats buildings around the farm and provides hot water.

cnn.com