Cow manure from Hereford feedlots will fuel ethanol plants

Cattleman, The, Sep 2006

Hereford, Texas, is about to become "the Saudi Arabia of manure."

That's what energy executive Todd W. Carter has dubbed the Panhandle town, where more than a million feedlot cattle generate 6,300 tons of manure per day.

Carter is chief executive officer of Dallas-based Panda Ethanol Inc., which plans to use the manure-more than 1 billion pounds a year-to fuel its 100-million-gallon elhanol plant in Hereford.

Panda announced Aug. 1 that it has completed financing and will immediately begin construction on the $120 million project. Carter anticipates that ethanol production will begin in the second halt of 2007.

The plant will refine U.S.-grown corn and milo into a clean-burning auto fuel that will replace the equivalent of 2.4 million barrels of imported gasoline per year.

Instead of using natural gas in its boilers, the plant will use technology that converts cattle manure and cotton gin waste into clean-burning bio-gas.

Carter says this should result in energy savings equivalent to 1,000 barrels of oil per day, making it one of the most fuel-efficient ethanol refineries in the nation.

Once completed, it will be the largest biomass-fueled ethanol plant in the United States.

Many area feedlot operators have signed contracts agreeing to give their manure to the plant free of charge.

Currently they pay local farmers 50 cents a ton to haul it away and use it as fertilizer. Johnny Trotter, president and CEO of Bar G Feedyard in Hereford, estimates he'll save at least $350,000 a year.

Feedlot operators, in turn, will benefit from waste produced by the ethanol plant. The process generates a residue known as distillers' wet grain (DWG), which is rich in protein and can be used as cattle feed.

A 100-million-gallon ethanol plant is expected to produce 820,000 ton of DWG per year.