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 1375

A Saskatoon based company expects to be using swine manure to supply some of Saskatchewan's electrical power...by the end of the year.

Clear-Green Environmental has partnered with Sask Power and Cudworth Pork Investors in the construction of a swine manure processing facility near Cudworth, Saskatchewan.

The plant is being built adjacent to a 12 hundred sow farrow to finish operation and will use anaerobic digesters to convert manure into methane gas.

The methane will fuel microturbines that will generate electricity. Clear-Green President and CEO Ben Voss says the process offers several advantages.

"Clear-Green is the operator and the owner of this facility and we provide manure management services to the hog operation at a cost that's competitive to their current manure management practices.

We also provide them with all the additional benefits of odor reduction and a reliable source of energy over the long term so their operating costs go down on a long term basis and they have all the additional environmental and image benefits that come with having his new technology.

From our side, being a business, we make a profit off of what ever we can produce out of the manure, energy being the primary product.

We also, as a result of the capture of methane and nitrous oxide, are able to sell something new called greenhouse gas credits.

We also plan to expand this facility in the next six months to enable us to produce commercial grade fertilizer".

Voss says heat generated by the microturbines will be recovered for use by both the power facility and the hog barns.

Construction is approximately 50 percent complete, the anaerobic digesters are due to be operational within six weeks and the facility is expected to be in production toward the end of next month.