Pond’s highly skilled process engineers provide design services for an innovative dairy farm’s capture of manure waste to create a water-to-energy, renewable natural gas (RNG) project in Michigan. Pond expedited civil designs to enable the earliest possible start for critical earth movements ahead of the winter season.

This technically advanced project consists of three separate dairy farms with engineered sand separation and anaerobic digestors used to generate and collect biogas. The gas mixture is pumped to an RNG upgrade process skid for transmission quality natural gas that is compressed into transmission pressure and injected into the transmission line.

The three dairies collectively have over 15,000 dairy cows producing over 365,000 gallons of manure daily. The dairy waste is flushed to a manure management system where sand and other non-volatile materials are removed. It is then thickened and introduced to the anaerobic digestor (AD). The AD process results in a renewable biogas fuel formation and digestate residual that is further processed for re-use. Biogas generated from anaerobic digestion processes is a relatively pure and environmentally friendly renewable fuel.

The project showcases a 3.2-million-gallon anaerobic digester tank used to enhance the facility’s capacity for waste processing. The detailed design established by the process equipment specifications and our piping and instrument diagrams (P&IDs) provided intelligent 3D models used to procure and implement construction. The project includes a lagoon cover with a methane interconnect to minimize environmental impacts and ensure regulatory compliance.