NZ Farmers Generate Energy from Biogas

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Friday, April 18, 2008

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NZ Farmers Generate Energy from Biogas

NEW ZEALAND - According to Radio New Zealand, with the increase in fuel and power prices, farmers are thinking up new ways of tapping into their own energy sources.

South Island cropping farmers are now growing thousands of hectares of oilseed rape under contract to the biofuel company, Biodiesel New Zealand.

But some are also growing the brassica to provide oil for their own diesel powered farm vehicles and machinery.

They include Earl and Vicki Dillon, who grow wheat, barley and other crops on their farm near Balfour in Southland.

They have just won the region's top farm environment award for their farming practices, which include using minimum tillage methods such as direct drilling to protect the soil structure and reduce compaction.

Earl Dillon says they are also growing rape to provide fuel for their grain drier. They have imported an extractor which produces squeezed oil. He says it will not be refined into biodiesel.

"We'll be able to burn it through the diesel burner, which fires the wheat dryer."

Biogas generated electricity

Meanwhile, a dairy farm in Canterbury is generating electricity from biogas extracted from cow dung.

An energy technology company, Natural Systems Limited, has set up a pilot plant on a Landcorp farm.

The biogas, a combination of methane and carbon dioxide, is produced in a digester that processes dung and urine collected from the dairy shed holding yard.

It powers an engine that generates electricity, as well as providing heating and cooling.

The company's technical director, Ian Bywater, says he believes it is the only system operating on a New Zealand farm that puts electricity back into the national grid.

He says about a third of the energy usually bought through the meter will be supplied from this source.

He also says the size of the dairy industry makes it possible for more manure to be collected and therefore more energy to be produced locally, where it is needed.

"That relieves the transmission and distribution network."

View the Radio New Zealand story by clicking here.