A new Homeland Biogas Energy anaerobic digestion plant on a dairy farm in Massey, Md., will create vehicle fuel for local transportation fleets, which could include trucks hauling biomass to a nearby poultry litter-to-power project in the state. You go, Maryland.

The Massey project will generate renewable compressed natural gas from dairy waste, as well as local food waste substrates. That RCNG will be sold for use as vehicle fuel, with the liquid and solid digestate used as fertilizer and soil amendments.

Homeland Biogas Energy is a subsidiary of Homeland Renewable Energy, as is Fibrowatt, which has partnered with Perdue AgriBusiness on a proposal for a poultry litter power project in Maryland. The partners submitted their project plans in response to the state’s Clean Bay Power request for proposals, and hope to build a 10 MW gasification plant in Salisbury, Md. The project would also create 70,000 pounds of steam per hour for use in Perdue’s adjacent soybean processing facility.

Here’s the exciting part. If the Fibrowatt project is chosen from the RFP and developed, the RCNG produced at the Massey AD plant would be used to fuel the trucks hauling biomass to the Salisbury power plant.

I love this integrated plan. The east coast of the U.S. has begun to seriously explore its options for reducing agricultural runoff and this synchronized project would link AD and gasification installations to do just that. Check out the June issue of Biomass Power & Thermal to learn more about the projects being developed to curb runoff into the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay region hosts beef, dairy, chicken and turkey farms, and most are beginning to look to AD, combustion and gasification of their animal waste, doing their part to keep the bay clean and healthy.

It’s great to see so many biomass projects with a common goal. Keep ‘em coming.