Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Anaerobic digestion (AD) of farm residues can benefit farmers not only as a renewable heat and power source, but also through solids recovery, odor, pathogen, and vector attraction reduction while producing a stabilized solids fertilizer. While AD installations at large farms have increased in the U.S., smaller farms have not taken advantage of AD technology. We and others have demonstrated on the pilot-scale the economic viability of modular AD technology for dairy farms of small to medium scale (25-500 cows). Yet, our research suggests that small-to-medium-scale farmers with interest still perceive economic and technological hurdles of AD technologies especially with regard to the intergration at their operations. There remains a knowledge gap between potential AD users and developers of AD technologies: we hypothesize that these farmers will make better informed decisions about adoption of AD technology appropriate for their farms if they are exposed to viable scale dependent options. Our goal is to integrate our prototype digester at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Farm with existing processes (e.g. greenhouse, commercial kitchen) and organic wastes from producers that are required to source separte their solid waste to optimize energy, nutrient flows and use it to educate stakeholders about AD systems for smaller-to-medium dairy farms. Data on system performance, economic performance and educational materials will be broadly disseminated to promote adoption of integrated AD technology.
Animal Health Component
70%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
70%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this integrated project is to expand our successful small farm anaerobic digester research and technology development, education, and outreach program at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Services of St. Lawrence County (CCES-SLC) extension farm site in Canton, NY to address the expressed needs of small dairy farmers, ultimately to improve their ability to make informed decisions when assessing potential AD technology applications. We will accomplish our goal by addressing the following project objectives:Integrate the anaerobic digester with the CCES-SLC commercial kitchen and the CCS Foodwaste program to demonstrate a waste to energy loop that can improve energy and nutrient cyclesImprove AD process monitoring and link both measured and continuous digester data to the web so it can be used nationwide as a data set to assess small digester performanceDevelop and extend educational activities and workshops for farmers, ag-academy, and K-12 students regarding closed loop sustainable agriculture practice for small farmsComplete economic assessment of a small digester system that is co-digesting foodwaste from local producers.Develop tools to assess farmer perception of integrated closed loop AD systems to be used pre- and post- extension outreach modules.
Project Methods
The project will employ data collection throughout the life of the project. In order to assess the performance of the AD system as a function of various foodwaste/manure ratios samples for digester input and out will have to be analyzed using analytical methods for solids content, chemical oxygen demand as well as primary nutrient composition. This data will be used together with continous data streams (temperature, biogas volume, methane content in the biogas) in a comprehensive energy and mass balance around the system.The energy and mass balance assessment will then be used in an economic assessment of the process. Results from that assessment will be used to determine optimum (most economical) mixture of manure and foodwaste as a function of digester scale. This information will be provided to the stakeholders during the farmer workshops.Assessment of farmer perception will be quantified using survey instruments, which will be developed as part of the project. Data from the pre and post surveys will be used to assess change of farmer perception as a results to exposure to the AD system and its primary data.K-12 student understanding about integrated resource recovery efforts will be assessed using survey instruments. Pre surveys will be administered to students at the beginning of the school year, while post surveys will be administered after the student's exposure to AD outreach efforts.