Waste to Watts: Michigan Dairy Industry Could Fuel a Greener Future
In partnership with: Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development
With historic clean energy legislation recently signed, Michigan is a national leader in climate change objectives and research. At Michigan State University, innovators are researching manure management to reduce carbon emissions and generate energy. MSU Anaerobic Digestion Research and Education Center (ADREC) is researching how to convert the manure from Michigan’s 438,000 dairy cows into fuel instead of releasing gases into the atmosphere.
“Anaerobic digestion is a biological process in which microorganisms break down organic material – such as food waste, manure, sewage sludge and biomass – in the absence of oxygen,” says Dr. Wei Liao, a biosystems engineering professor at ADREC who oversees this revolutionary solution-based project. “This process produces biogas, which is primarily made up of methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) and digestate. Biogas can be used to generate electricity or renewable natural gas. And digestate could be post-treated to reclaim the water and produce nitrogen- and phosphorous-rich fertilizers for croplands.”
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Manure to Miles
Roughly 97% of Michigan’s 900 dairy farms are modest, family-owned operations. Thus, Liao says MSU ADREC is exploring anaerobic digestion systems tailored to small- and medium-sized farms.
“One such innovation is a dairy farm-based renewable electric vehicle (EV) charging solution with simple and robust direct biogas utilization of electricity generation for on-farm or localized EV charging,” Liao explains.
This system aims to address the challenges of the existing anaerobic digestion technology, including scalability, high capital and operational costs of biogas cleanup for electricity generation, as well as financial and incentive barriers.
Dairy farm-based renewable EV charging solutions could enable a carbon-neutral dairy industry and promote rural energy independence and resilience, Liao says of potential outcomes.
He explains that, on the national scale, the anaerobic digestion of 81 million kilograms of dry manure per day produced by more than 9 million dairy cows in the U.S. could generate 43 terawatt-hours of biogas electricity annually.
“Better electricity prices for EV charging will boost the economic performance of dairy farms,” Liao says.
Considering the battery size of an electric pickup truck is 100 kilowatt-hour (kWh) – 230 miles/100 kWh and an average consumption rate of 17 kWh/day – and assuming 50% of dairy farms adopt this approach, the dairy industry has the potential to meet the energy needs of 4 million electric pickup trucks, equivalent to 8% of all pickup trucks in the U.S. Thus, the dairy industry could play a pivotal role in electrifying the U.S. auto fleet, particularly in rural areas.
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