Renewable natural gas facility approved for Ocheda Dairy - Agweek

Renewable natural gas facility approved for Ocheda Dairy - Agweek | #1 source for agriculture news, farming, markets

Renewable natural gas facility approved for Ocheda Dairy

The project will include a 2.5 million-gallon digester, compressors and gas processing equipment to produce natural gas and compress it into the pipeline.

WORTHINGTON — Ocheda Dairy plans to build a renewable natural gas production facility south of Worthington, in partnership with Vaca Verde RNG and its parent company Novilla, RNG, that will produce the energy equivalent to about 625,000 gallons of gasoline per year.

Its plans were given the go-ahead by the Nobles County Board of Commissioners Tuesday when a conditional use permit for the project was unanimously approved.

The county’s Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval during its July 26 meeting, setting the conditions that the project can’t begin construction until it receives all necessary permits from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, that the project must be constructed according to the plans provided to the committee and that it must be started by fall 2025.

The project will include a 2.5 million-gallon digester, compressors and gas processing equipment to produce natural gas and compress it into the pipeline. It will also include environmental control technology, including a flare and thermal oxidizer, to combust biogas and separated gas streams, as well as additional manure-handling equipment and pumps.

New structures on the property will include an above-ground anaerobic digester tank made of steel, with 18-inch-thick double-reinforced slabs as a foundation, as well as an 50- by 60-foot office and equipment building with a natural gas-fired boiler, heat exchanger and pumps. A third structure, a biogas process building, will contain the processing equipment for separating the natural gas from unwanted gases, primarily CO2 and H2S, according to Vaca Verde’s report on the project.

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The presentation also stated odor and noise levels will meet all local ordinances. Flares and the thermal oxidizer will combust odor-causing compounds, and noise-producing equipment will be housed in buildings.

“(The Environmental Protection Agency) describes benefits of anaerobic lagoons as ‘What comes out of a digester after processing is much less odorous than the feedstocks that go into digesters,’” Vaca Verde's report states.

Ocheda Dairy Presentation by the Globe on Scribd

The presentation also included information about safety measures, such as automated e-stops, methane and fire detection devices as well as hydrogen sulfide monitoring, safety training for technicians and a plant walk-through and annual meeting with first responders.

Groundbreaking could begin in the spring, with production beginning in September 2024.

The facility, proposed to be constructed west of Ocheda Dairy's building site, is projected to create two highly-skilled full-time jobs, as well as work for those constructing the facility and ongoing vendor work for local electricians and utilities.

It would also make milk from the dairy more attractive to buyers, as it will have lower carbon emissions and provide vehicle fuel from a renewable, local source.

The project will be capable of making 50,000 MMBtu of renewable natural gas per year.

Vaca Verde hopes to inject that gas into a local gas line with Minnesota Energy Resources, but if that proposal does not go through, the gas can be injected into a compressed natural gas trailer and taken to a pipeline location in Sioux City, Iowa. That would require about one truck every two days.

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Two technicians would be on-site during the day monitoring the plant and on-call in the evening. According to Jared Williams, co-CEO of Novilla RNG, the plant will be programmed to default to a safe state if a process goes outside the operating parameters.

The Planning and Zoning Committee unanimously approved the conditional use permit.