Emad Ghafoori

TL;DR: This study calculates for small- and large-project sizes, the relative cost of transportation by truck, rail, ship, and pipeline for three biomass feedstocks, by truck and Pipeline for ethanol, and by transmission line for electrical power.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors evaluate the cost of pipelining manure from cattle feedlots and digestate from an AD plant as an alternative to truck transport, and show that manure pipeline must run for a minimum distance to recover the incremental fixed cost of trans-shipment; at 300,000 animals, the minimum economic pipeline distance is 9 km.

Abstract: Anaerobic digestion (AD) of manure from confined feeding operations (CFOs) to produce biogas and in turn electric power in farm or feedlot based units as well as centralized plants is evaluated for two settings in Alberta, Canada: a mixed farming area (Red Deer County), and an area of concentrated beef cattle feedlots (Lethbridge County). Centralized plants need to transport manure to the plant and digestate back to the source CFO, an added cost relative to farm or feedlot based plants, but gain from the economy of scale in plant capital and operating cost. Based on a county survey of manure sources, a centralized plant drawing manure from 63 sources in the mixed farming area, at a manure yield of 34 dry tonne year-1 km-2, could produce 5.9 net MW of power at a cost of $240 MWh-1 (in 2005 U.S. dollars). No individual CFO in the mixed farming area, including a 7,500 head beef cattle feedlot, could produce power at a lower cost with a farm or feedlot based unit. Based on manure yields from an Alberta-based 1 MW demonstration AD plant, a centralized plant drawing manure from 560,000 beef cattle in Lethbridge County, at a manure yield of 280 dry tonne year-1 km-2, could produce power at a cost of $150 MWh-1. In Lethbridge County, an individual feedlot larger than 20,000 head of beef cattle could produce power at a lower cost than the centralized plant. Commercial processes to recover concentrated nutrients and a dischargeable water stream from digestate are not available. However, the theoretical impact of digestate processing was analyzed based on a capital cost of 2/3 of the AD plant itself. Digestate processing shifts the balance in favor of centralized processing, and a feedlot would need to be larger than 250,000 head to produce power at a lower cost than a centralized plant. Power from biogas has a high cost relative to current power prices and to the cost of power from other large-scale renewable sources. Power from biogas would need to be justified by other factors than energy value alone, such as phosphate recovery, pathogen reduction, or odor control.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compared the emissions of a North American beef feedlot operation, which includes biogas production by anaerobic digestion with subsequent electricity generation (the AD case), to the emissions for a business as usual case, which included both a feedlot and an equivalent amount of grid-generated electricity.

TL;DR: In this article, the cost of power and gas and the carbon emission reduction from anaerobic digestion (AD) plants receiving manure from multiple sources is calculated for plants of varying scale, with the lowest cost coming from a single AD plant processing manure from the same source.