Feasibility of Reducing a Dairy Farm’s Manure Enterprise Costs Using a Wet Gasification Technology

Abstract

Manure management is a major system on dairy farms and there is a goal to minimize costs and maximize benefits. Adding a wet gasification system to reduce spreading costs and possibly increase byproduct sales was evaluated on a central New York farm that was considering expanding but would need additional crop fields to recycle the additional manure at a further distance from the farmstead. There are many variables to consider. On the example farm the economics of the system would only be favorable if some optimistic values were assumed such as higher prices for the ash byproduct and/or higher prices for the excess energy produced. Dairy manure as produced moisture content is too high for efficient gasification. Wet gasification is better suited to operations where the raw manure is drier or can be separated into a low concentration liquid stream (that can be spray irrigated) and a high total solid content (25 to 30% solids) solid stream that could be processed by gasification into a salable ash.