Manure digester plans on track
By Shelley Ridenour
Times-News writer

RUPERT -- The recent turnabout in weather, the disappearance of snow and the drying out of the ground have added to the assurances that work on the planned anaerobic digester in rural Rupert will begin March 30.

Intrepid Technology and Resources Vice President Jake Dustin said dairy owners Steve, Brent and Brandon Whitesides are moving silage bags from the construction area this week in preparation for the start of work.

No construction contract has yet been awarded, Dustin said. That won't happen until next month but the bid packages are out. The expectation is the successful contractor will start work in mid-April.

The as-yet-unidentified technology supplier for the project has put the tank construction out for bids, too, Dustin said. The tanks are to be fabricated while the concrete pad is being poured and other work is occurring at the site. The two steel tanks are expected to arrive at the dairy in early June ready to be bolted to the concrete. The tanks are 34 feet tall and 13.5 feet in diameter.

While an in-house groundbreaking of sorts is planned for Tuesday, Dustin said the event will be relatively "anticlimactic." Essentially it will involve Intrepid officials surveying and staking the site and setting the stake corners.

"We're on schedule," Dustin said, "that's the bottom line."

In January Intrepid officials announced their plans to build and operate the first anaerobic manure digester in Idaho at the Whitesides Dairy. Anaerobic digesters are viewed as a way to deal with problems resulting from the large volumes of manure produced by south-central Idaho dairies.

The digesters take manure and create methane gas through the anaerobic digestion process. At the Whitesides project the methane generated from one tank will be dedicated to the dairy and will replace propane as a fuel source. Intrepid will maintain ownership of the methane from the second tank. Plans are to use that gas as a demonstration platform for the company to compress and package methane for sale to various customers.

There are no plans to convert the methane into electricity.

Intrepid officials have also reached an agreement to build another anaerobic digester at a dairy near Wendell. That project will occur after the Whitesides venture is completed.

"We're getting a lot more interest," Dustin said. "A lot more people are peeking over the fence."

But he cautioned that there are plenty of hurdles to clear before the projects are proven.

Intrepid's goal is to package and sell gas created at anaerobic digesters. Because they plan to use a high-rate digestion process that will create biogas with a methane content of 80 percent, they believe their project will be successful. Most digesters produce gas with a methane content of between 60 and 65 percent.

Shelley Ridenour is editor of The Times-News Mini-Cassia Bureau. She can be reached at 208-677-4042, Ext. 642, or by e-mail at sridenour@magicvalley.com.