Indiana farm moo-ving with clean transport energy

A farm in Indiana, US has begun fuelling its fleet of 42 tractor-trailers by re-using the cattle dung it collects on-site.

Fair Oaks Farms (FOF) has around 30,000 cows as part of its operation and it has a $12 million (€9.2 million) digester on its property that converts their manure, and that of pigs, into natural gas. The business used to simply convert into CHP for its barns and other structures but now some of it is used to keep the fleet on the roads.

‘As long as we keep milking cows, we never run out of gas," FOF CEO Gary Corbett was quoted as saying. ‘The switch to cow power saves us from using 2 million gallons of diesel fuel a year and the US Department of Energy believes this to be the largest fleet powered by agricultural waste currently in operation in this country.’

The overall bioenergy project began in June 2011when FOF contracted Clean Energy to build two fuelling stations. The project received financial backing from grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Indiana Office of Energy Development.

A study on the project by the Innovation Centre for US also says the FOF system captures 98% of methane emissions produced.