School Digester

I have been in contact with Brad Frazee of Intrepid Technology & Resources, Inc. about the Whitesides Dairy biogas facility in Rupert, Idaho. The Whitesides plant produces about 30 million cubic feet of methane per year (~850,000 cubic meters.) In order to produce the 160,000 cubic meters of methane per year for the school Brad said that we would need approximately 800 cows, which would produce a total of 13,000 gallons of manure per day.

A facility this size would be very possible to build but the capital cost per cubic foot of methane would be high. The cost of the equipment does not scale down to our required size very well.

I have found that natural gas produces 1,000 Btus per cubic foot of natural gas. The methane produced from biogas produces about 600 Btus per cubic foot of biogas. This may sound like the biogas does not help much at all, but this methane would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. The school requires approximately 3.3489 billion Btus per year. The gym/theater building is the most inneficient building at school; using approximately 40% (1,376,500,000 Btus per year) of the natural gas that is routed to the school uses.