There is an interesting project going on in East Texas that could open up a lot of prospects for the agricultural future. The South West Farm Press ran a recent article concerning what is going on at Leona. What’s going on is the very first cellulose biogas plant in the United States. This is a green power plant under the watchful eyes of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Natural Resources Conversation Commission.
This is a new and unique way to produce electricity through the use of a farm crop. This time, following what former President George W. Bush always stated to do, there is no food crop being used.
In fact, their selection of the crop to use was one that could be grown on land presently taken out of production. The crop is a hybrid forage type of sorghum, a grass. No food source is used to make this electrical power, unlike all the corn used in ethanol production last year.
The fallowed farm fields — there are more than 21 million such acres in Texas — after being selected were deforested; others had the organic manner and nutrients in the soil built up.
Thus they had perfect conditions for seedbeds to plant the sorghum as a dry land crop. Irrigation to begin with was not needed for their intended crop. They started with some 2,400 acres of sorghum, enough to keep the plant running day and night all year and to stockpile the sorghum for next year as well.
The plant, nicknamed “the concrete cow,” consumes the sorghum in a way mimicking how a cow would digest sorghum silage. Bacteria breaks down the cellulose and as you might guess gas is produced. In this case it is biomethane gas. My September column notes that cattle are some of the worst polluters due to their production of methane gas. In this case they try to have their “concrete cow” really bloat as it were to really produce more biomethane gas. The biomethane gas is then collected and used to fire the generators which are producing one megawatt of electricity presently.
The “concrete cow” is currently consuming two tons of sorghum silage 24 hours a day, providing one megawatt of electricity. That is enough to power 400 homes all year long. Nearby Houston County Utility is presently purchasing all this power.
This story makes a great green power project, but the people involved have made it even greener.
The people behind this project are capturing the CO2 from the biomethane burning in the generators and along with the byproduct nutrients are growing algae which will be used to make biodiesel to be used by their farmer’s tractors in working the sorghum fields.
This whole project does not use water — remember they farmed dry land fields — yet silage, which is some 67 percent moisture, allows them to capture mineral and nutrient rich water as a byproduct. This water is now going back onto their fields to increase their yields.
Not only is this a very green electrical production method, but it opens up a whole new prospect for the future of farmers. At the same time their practices are very much in line with being good stewards of God’s land.
Father Samuel Heitkamp is a retired priest and was director of the former rural life organization in the archdiocese.