Anaerobic digestion of livestock manures: A current opportunities casebook

Growth and concentration of the livestock industry creates new opportunities for proper disposal of the large quantities of manures generated at dairy, swine, and poultry farms. One manure management system provides not only pollution prevention but also converts a problem into a new profit center. Economic evaluations and case studies of operating systems indicate that the anaerobic digestion of livestock manures is a commercially-available bioconversion technology with considerable potential for providing profitable co-products, including a renewable fuel. An introduction to the engineering economies of these technologies is provided, based on estimates of digesters that generate electricity from the recovered methane. Regression models used to estimate digester cost and internal rate of return are developed from the evaluations. Case studies of operating digesters, including project and maintenance histories, and the operator`s {open_quotes}lessons learned{close_quotes}, are provided as a reality check