Penn State First Digester Day A Big Success

On July 21st, farmers and ag professionals gathered at Penn State's Ag Arena from throughout the region to take part in the first Penn State Extension Digester Day. The event included panel discussions, table displays, networking, and a walking tour of the university's new anaerobic digester.

New developments and opportunities were the focus of much of the discussion during the day, including the innovative C-Change Grass to Gas project (a prime sponsor of Digester Day), which is seeking to turn perennial grasses into value-added Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) for the transportation market. The credit market was an area of significant interest, with William Sapon of People's Peoples Natural Gas, an Essential Utilities company, noting the industry's growing interest in RNG and Chris Tynan of Burnham Development pointing out that digester owners now have a strategic opportunity to increase income through participation in those markets. Will Charlton of Digester Doc, an anaerobic digester consulting company, pointed out the importance of understanding the biology of a farm's digester, including the surprising fact that biology-based issues account for about four times as much downtime in digesters as mechanical issues. When the discussion turned to financing, Mark Stoermann of Newtrient reminded all that the first step in developing a digester project is to "sit down with your accountant and find out how much you are already paying for your manure management".

The afternoon walking tour of the university's new digester was a highlight for many attendees, where digester operator Randall Swope showed off his new facility. This digester has been in the planning stages for many years, and its construction and operation represents a great deal of effort from many people throughout the university system. Among the objectives for the digester were odor reduction, improved manure handling, and energy production. One of the big technical challenges for the project was dealing with the sand bedding that is used in the dairy barns since sand has a tendency to abrade pipes and accumulate in digester tanks.

Operated by the university's Animal Science department, the digester features an above-ground digester tank (an unusual configuration for Pennsylvania), a sand separator, and an engine generator. The digester is located adjacent to the university's dairy barns but is designed to accept manure from all of their farm facilities. COVID-related travel restrictions have delayed the final commissioning of the generator, but all other components in the digester facility are operating fully.

Thanks to co-sponsorship from the PA Center for Dairy Excellence and help from the USDA NRCS, the day ended with a special roundtable meeting for farm digester owners, where problems, opportunities and solutions were discussed among those who work with their digesters daily.

"We're really pleased with how the event went," said organizer Siobhan Fathel. "I'm looking forward to what we'll be able to do at next year's Digester Day"