A South Florida dairy farmer is turning his cows' poop into power.
Jacob Larson, the owner of the Larson Dairy Farm, said all of the milk there goes down to Miami to be bottled and produced. The farm produces enough milk to feed 250,000 people per day, but cows are also the number one agricultural source of greenhouse gases — specifically methane from their manure.
"Cows by themselves are already huge recyclers for us, however, we do know that cows emit gas a form of methane into the atmosphere," Larson said.
Cows are ruminants and can eat food waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill and create their own greenhouse gases as they break down, but according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one cow produces between 150 to 260 pounds of methane gas per year. This makes them the number one agricultural greenhouse gas producer.
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The Larson Farm partnered with Brightmark to take that gas and recycle it to turn it into a renewable gas.
“We’re able to reduce about 57,000 tons of CO2 equivalent per year from being released into the atmosphere," Bob Powell from Brightmark said. "That’s the equivalent to planting 75,000 acres of forest yearly.”
Larson described the process.
"As that whole stream goes down into what we call the collection pit, and then it will be pumped into the digester," Larson said. "It stays in there for 30 days and as it’s in there, that’s how the gas is collected off of it.”
All of the methane gas captured in the digester will soon be taken processed and cleaned to then be utilized to power thousands of homes.
“It’s a process that goes on to a transmission pipeline that then goes to the nearest power plant or off-takers that are taking that gas and using it to power," Ryan Berger from Brightmark said.
The project allows the water used to flush the manure to also be recycled. Plus, the solid waste byproduct of the manure can be used as a healthy fertilizer.
"It's doing things like taking phosphorus out of the manures that oftentimes get land applied, we can actually assist managing the nutrients that would then go into the lake and ultimately down into the Everglades," Powell said.
Brightmark currently has 30 biogas projects across the country, but Larson’s is the only one in Florida.
