Manure Storage, Cover & Flare System Installed

The Ontario County Soil & Water
Conservation District used funding
from Round 6 of the New York State
Department of Agriculture and
Markets’ Climate Resilient Farming
program to install a covered storage
and methane flare project on one of
Ontario County’s progressive, large
dairy farms.
This covered storage and flare
project is designed to work in tandem with an on-farm biogas digester system that
processes and recycles
renewable energy
biogas back into the
commercial natural gas pipeline
system. The covered storage and
flare system stores and
processes over 3 million gallons
of post digested manure at a
time. The entire system will
process up to 18 million gallons
of manure per year.
The new cover and flare system
is designed to function both
with, and independent of, the
digester system. The manure is first processed through the methane digester where
the biogas is captured and transported via the natural
gas pipeline. Manure is then separated and the solids
are recycled back into bedding. Post-processed waste,
as well as waste which is in excess of what the digester
can process, is stored in the new covered storage
where the biogas is directed through the flare system.
This new facility flares off all remaining fugitive
methane emissions, as well as continuing to
burn off all additional methane emissions
that form after the post processed manure
has been sitting in storage.
This full system approach, with a double
treatment of manure on the farm, allows for
a 99% use and destruction rate of all
methane produced in this waste stream. This
project serves 2,400 animal units and recycles
and/or destroys over 200,000 cubic feet of
biogas per day. The flare system is integrated
into the facility-wide instrumentation and control system which automatically records operational
conditions and quantifies production numbers allowing the flare to function at peak efficiency in both the
cooler late fall and spring conditions as well as the warm summer months.
This post processed
manure can now be
stored under cover
until conditions are
right to field apply, or
until the manure is
moved to a satellite
facility. A buried 10”
manure transfer line
was installed as part of
this project to take the
processed manure directly from this
new storage, to adjacent farmland, as
well as across the road, where it can be
dragline applied to hundreds of acres
of adjacent cropland. This takes up to
500 tanker truckloads of manure off of
our roads each year.