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Cows at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington will produce natural gas from cow manure by October thanks to a new methane digester.
Cows at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington will produce natural gas from cow manure by October thanks to a new methane digester.
Cows at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington will produce natural gas from cow manure by October thanks to a new methane digester seen here.
Cows at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington will produce natural gas from cow manure by October thanks to a new methane digester.
Cows at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington will produce natural gas from cow manure by October thanks to a new methane digester.
Cows at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington will produce natural gas from cow manure by October thanks to a new methane digester seen here.
ELLINGTON — At Oakridge Dairy, the cows are doing double duty — providing milk and sustainable energy.
After breaking ground in November 2021, construction of the dairy’s two million-gallon, methane digester is almost complete and should be operational by October.
WHAT: The methane digester at Oakridge Dairy that broke ground in November 2021 will be turning methane into natural gas by October.
PRODUCTION: The digester is expected to produce 60,000 dekatherms per year and can hold 21 days worth of cow manure. The farm’s 3,000 cows produce about 70,000 gallons of manure a day.
The farm was founded in 1890 by the Adolph Bahler family and has been striving towards efficiency and sustainability while keeping their 3,000 cows as comfortable as possible. Installation of the digester will only enhance the already efficient farm by turning methane into natural gas, owners say.
“At the end product, we’ll have a natural gas that can be used and be injected right into the pipeline for renewable natural gas,” CEO and owner of Oakridge Dairy LLC Seth Bahler said Thursday. “It’s taking a waste product and turning it into an energy.”
According to Bahler, cows eat around 100 pounds of food per day. That energy is used to produce 10 gallons of milk and 15 gallons of manure daily.
Once construction is complete, that manure will pump into the digester where methane bugs will consume it and create methane gas.
Cleaning technology from Europe, which has not been installed yet, would turn that methane into natural gas. Bahler said 70,000 gallons of manure will be pumped into the digester tank a day and that it can hold 21 days worth of manure.
The leftover product won’t be wasted as it’s still good fertilizer, he added. The extraction of methane does not take away from the use of manure to help crops grow. After the manure goes through the digester, it’s processed so the solids and liquids are separated.
“The liquid is actually what we put on our fields for future crops,” Bahler said. “It’s just another step in the process to be sustainable.”
The digester is expected to provide 60,000 dekatherms of natural gas per year, or the equivalent of 1 million Btu. This would be enough to power 600 to 800 cars that run on natural gas, or heat 780 houses with a natural gas generator for a year.
All of the gas produced will be sent to New Jersey for Elizabethtown Gas customers. But Oakridge will still reap the many other benefits of the project.
The dairy farm will receive a percentage of the revenue for the gas, reduce its carbon footprint and odor. The tank also kills pathogens, which will result in better health for the cows, owners say.
The funding for this $15 million project comes largely from South Jersey Industries, while REV LNG, LLC has built and will maintain the digester. Oakridge’s responsibility is to simply supply the manure.
To get the gas into a pipeline, a 53-foot semi-tanker will transport a load of compressed gas to an injection point every other day.
“Our goal is to hook up to the local pipeline locally at some point,” Bahler said.
The methane digester is just the newest technology at Oakridge making the farm more efficient and sustainable. Along with heath monitoring collars for cows and their 750 solar panels, the farm also has a rotary-milking parlor, which has been operational since 2017.
One by one cows independently step on and off the rotary while classical music plays to keep them calm and relaxed. This motorized system milks around 450 cows in an hour.
One rotation lasts about 10 minutes and a cow is milked for about six of those minutes. The milk then goes through a filtering process as well as a chiller that drops the temperature by over 60 degrees.
“It’s from the cow to the tanker in about two minutes,” Bahler said.
Bahler’s uncle, Vern Bahler, has been with the farm for 57 years. When he started at just 10 years old, he carried buckets of milk by hand, he said.
Bahler said this technology “wasn’t even dreamed of years ago.”
Collin covers East Windsor and Windsor Locks for the Journal Inquirer.
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Collin covers East Windsor, Ellington, and Windsor Locks for the Journal Inquirer.
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