Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1326

Bio-Terre Systems is confident a newly designed earthen manure storage system will dramatically reduce the cost of collecting and utilizing methane from liquid swine manure.

About five years ago Bio-Terre Systems completed the successful development of an anaerobic digestion and energy co-generation system to process and treat hog manure in colder climates.

The anaerobic system uses a very durable microbial process to destroy odor causing compounds and pathogens while a sealed plastic cover allows the collection of methane gas which can be used to produce energy for the farm.

Bio-Terre Systems President Dennis Hodgkinson says the goal now is to make the technology more affordable.

"The key to this whole technology is the microbial process itself.

What we're doing is trying to develop and evaluate a lower cost system for enclosing the microbial process.

In our previous farms we have used above grade steel vessels for the reactors.

We have developed a style of earthen vessel digestor that is amenable to the industry in Western Canada.

We have relatively large farms and by using an in-earth vessel we believe we can markedly reduce the cost of implementing this technology.

We will be completing construction in three to four weeks. We will begin filling the reactors with material and starting the process of seeding it with microbes and multiplying those microbes. We expect to be up to full gas production before Christmas".

Hodgkinson says the researchers will monitor the system startup over the first six months of the project and then gas production data will be collected and evaluated for an additional six months.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.