EV presented awards to three notable anaerobic digester projects that are processing food and agricultural waste into clean fuel and soil amendments.
BioTown Biogas was the first awardee. A partnership between BioTown Ag and Green Rock Energy Partners, it expanded the existing anaerobic digester facility on BioTown Ag’s Reynolds, Indiana farm into one of the largest on-farm digester operations in the world. The facility now processes food waste, manure, and other agricultural waste from around the region. It produces an estimated 42 million kilowatt-hours of renewable power plus enough renewable natural gas fuel to replace more than 3 million gallons of diesel per year.
The second awardee was Dickinson College Farm, located a few miles from the campus in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Once fully operational next spring, the digester will serve as both a hands-on learning resource for Dickinson students and as a replicable model for other small farms nationwide. The digester processes manure from a neighboring farm’s dairy cows, food waste from the College’s dining hall and local businesses, and spent grain from a local brewery. This eliminates manure runoff, avoids methane emissions, harnesses the biogas, and generates renewable electricity to power the college farm and sell back to the grid.
The third award went to EMG International and American Fruits & Flavors (AFF). The two companies partnered to install EMG’s proprietary digester technology at AFF’s beverage factory in San Fernando, California to treat its high-strength wastewater. EMG’s system removes over 1.8 million pounds of organic matter from the plant’s wastewater stream per year, reducing strain on the local municipal wastewater treatment plant and significantly reducing sewer surcharges. That organic waste is instead used to generate biogas, producing approximately 16,000 MMBTUs of renewable energy per year.
As EV President Matt Tomich said, “There are currently 2,400 anaerobic digesters in the U.S., and more in the pipeline, but there is room for many more. Thousands of facilities could use this technology.” EV Founder Joanna Underwood concluded, “Every country in the world needs lower methane emissions, clean fuel, and a way to restore soils. Once the anaerobic digester infrastructure is in place, we get free, carbon-negative fuel and fertilizer from farms, businesses, and municipal wastewater, etc. These facilities will be crucial worldwide.”
