Irish livestock farmers will be able to sell their manure and slurry to a “manure co-op” to produce biogas
Genos Resources is running a €120 million anaerobic digestion (AD) project and its operations director said it will be speaking to livestock farmers.
“We’re actively targeting livestock farmers big and small across the country to pledge their support for what effectively is a manure co-op, as opposed to a milk co-op,” explained Leon Mekitarian.
Around 600 farmers are needed for the project which will bring the centralised biorefinery concept to Irish agriculture where on-farm biogas is not available and aims to be operational by 2024.
Mr Mekitarian said the manure and slurry would be put through the planned plant and the end product will be a high temperature biogas that will go into the energy sector.
“We plan on making hydrogen from our electricity and capture the CO2 from the process and sequester it into the fertiliser,” he added.
“It will be a dry fertiliser product – that’s sort of the key difference really to perhaps a traditional on-farm biogas plant, the digestate comes out in a dry pellet form, similar to what people would spread in a fertiliser spreader.”
There are several benefits of the proposed “manure co-op” the operations director said; firstly, the firm is placing a value on the manure and farmers will be paid for supplying it as a commodity.