Construction begins on Hull methane plant
By Dave Dreeszen Journal business editor | Posted: Wednesday, July 11, 2007
HULL, Iowa -- Sioux County farmers raise lots of livestock -- more than double any other Iowa county per square mile. All those beef cattle, dairy cows, hogs and chickens, of course, leave behind a large amount of manure. Soon, some of that foul-smelling waste will be turned into clean-burning fuel.
A Minnesota-based firm formally broke ground Tuesday on a $12 million methane plant that's billed as the country's largest. Backers say the project will develop a new source of renewable energy and help protect the environment. It will also directly create 70 new jobs and pump new dollars into the area agriculture sector.
"The economic impact of a project this size will be very beneficial,'' Hull Mayor John Kooima said at Tuesday's groundbreaking. More than 125 area residents gathered under a large tent at the rural Sioux County site, just west of Hull and a mile south of the intersections of Highways 75 and 18.
The ceremony culminated nearly two years of planning by state and local officials and the plant owner, Bison Renewable Energy of Mendota Heights, Minn. The Northwest Iowa plant is the first of 20 or more BRADs, or biogas regional anaerobic digesters, that the company plans to build nationwide in the next few years, said Steve Nelson, Bison Renewable's finance director. The company is scouting additional sites in the tri-state region, he said.
It's no accident that Bison Renewable picked Sioux County for its flagship plant, known as The Cornerstone Brad. It's one of the top five livestock producing counties, marketing 2.5 million hogs and 228,000 fed cattle in 2003, according to government reports.
"There's a healthy livestock environment in this county,'' Nelson said.
Steve Manders, another Bison Renewable executive who spoke at Tuesday's ceremony, said the renewable energy project creates opportunities for area farmers to expand their livestock herds.
The company, which raised capital from more than 200 local investors, also was drawn by the region's labor force.
"The folks around here are hardworking,'' he said. "It's the type of employees we want to attract.''
Bison Renewable Energy plans to contract with a number of livestock producers to supply manure, which will represent half of the raw materials for the plant. The remainder will come from other waste, such as animal fat, from area industrial plants. Nelson said he could not yet identify local manufacturers who plan to supply waste products for the methane plant.
If the plant were to run entirely on manure, Nelson said it would take the equivalent of waste from 1.6 million hogs per year.
Grading is already under way at the Bison Renewable site, with the plant expected to become operational in December 2008. HCI Construction, a subsidiary of Winnebago, Neb.-based Ho-Chunk Inc., is overseeing the project.
The design features 11 1-million-gallon tanks, where the manure and food waste will be mixed. The anaerobic process, which eliminates oxygen, separates solids from liquids.
Prime BioSolutions plans to employ a similar anaerobic digester process for a new plant in Dakota County, Neb. That project would be self-contained, however, with manure from a feedlot creating methane to power an on-site ethanol plant.
The methane produced at the Bison Renewable Energy plant would be compressed and inserted into the nearby Northern Natural Gas pipeline. Bison Renewable has a contract with Xcel Energy to buy the natural gas. The Minneapolis-based utility serves 1.8 million natural gas customers in eight Midwestern states.
Burning the methane produced from the manure and waste is better for the environment than allowing it to naturally escape into the atmosphere, backers said. That's because it has a much higher global warming effect than carbon dioxide, which is created when methane is burned.
The methane gas process also creates a byproduct that can be used to fertilize crops. State and local officials predicted the odorless fertilizer could help defuse the heated debate that has gripped Iowa involving large-scale livestock feedstocks.
Mark Sybesma, chairman of the Sioux County Board of Supervisors, said the widespread application of manure on fields has pitted neighbors against one another because of its smell. The large volume of manure created by growing livestock herds has even helped drive up the price of prime farmground, he said.
"That's why a lot of folks around here buy more land -- so they can have enough to spread their manure,'' he said.
Watch the video:
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/video/vid_archive/20070710_methaneplant384K/20070710_methaneplant384K.jpg
A Minnesota-based firm formally broke ground Tuesday on a $12 million methane plant that's billed as the country's largest. Backers say the project will develop a new source of renewable energy and help protect the environment. It will also directly create 70 new jobs and pump new dollars into the area agriculture sector.
"The economic impact of a project this size will be very beneficial,'' Hull Mayor John Kooima said at Tuesday's groundbreaking. More than 125 area residents gathered under a large tent at the rural Sioux County site, just west of Hull and a mile south of the intersections of Highways 75 and 18.
The ceremony culminated nearly two years of planning by state and local officials and the plant owner, Bison Renewable Energy of Mendota Heights, Minn. The Northwest Iowa plant is the first of 20 or more BRADs, or biogas regional anaerobic digesters, that the company plans to build nationwide in the next few years, said Steve Nelson, Bison Renewable's finance director. The company is scouting additional sites in the tri-state region, he said.
It's no accident that Bison Renewable picked Sioux County for its flagship plant, known as The Cornerstone Brad. It's one of the top five livestock producing counties, marketing 2.5 million hogs and 228,000 fed cattle in 2003, according to government reports.
"There's a healthy livestock environment in this county,'' Nelson said.
Steve Manders, another Bison Renewable executive who spoke at Tuesday's ceremony, said the renewable energy project creates opportunities for area farmers to expand their livestock herds.
The company, which raised capital from more than 200 local investors, also was drawn by the region's labor force.
"The folks around here are hardworking,'' he said. "It's the type of employees we want to attract.''
Bison Renewable Energy plans to contract with a number of livestock producers to supply manure, which will represent half of the raw materials for the plant. The remainder will come from other waste, such as animal fat, from area industrial plants. Nelson said he could not yet identify local manufacturers who plan to supply waste products for the methane plant.
If the plant were to run entirely on manure, Nelson said it would take the equivalent of waste from 1.6 million hogs per year.
Grading is already under way at the Bison Renewable site, with the plant expected to become operational in December 2008. HCI Construction, a subsidiary of Winnebago, Neb.-based Ho-Chunk Inc., is overseeing the project.
The design features 11 1-million-gallon tanks, where the manure and food waste will be mixed. The anaerobic process, which eliminates oxygen, separates solids from liquids.
Prime BioSolutions plans to employ a similar anaerobic digester process for a new plant in Dakota County, Neb. That project would be self-contained, however, with manure from a feedlot creating methane to power an on-site ethanol plant.
The methane produced at the Bison Renewable Energy plant would be compressed and inserted into the nearby Northern Natural Gas pipeline. Bison Renewable has a contract with Xcel Energy to buy the natural gas. The Minneapolis-based utility serves 1.8 million natural gas customers in eight Midwestern states.
Burning the methane produced from the manure and waste is better for the environment than allowing it to naturally escape into the atmosphere, backers said. That's because it has a much higher global warming effect than carbon dioxide, which is created when methane is burned.
The methane gas process also creates a byproduct that can be used to fertilize crops. State and local officials predicted the odorless fertilizer could help defuse the heated debate that has gripped Iowa involving large-scale livestock feedstocks.
Mark Sybesma, chairman of the Sioux County Board of Supervisors, said the widespread application of manure on fields has pitted neighbors against one another because of its smell. The large volume of manure created by growing livestock herds has even helped drive up the price of prime farmground, he said.
"That's why a lot of folks around here buy more land -- so they can have enough to spread their manure,'' he said.
Watch the video:
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/video/vid_archive/20070710_methaneplant384K/20070710_methaneplant384K.jpg
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