Case Story Canada

COMPACT AND AUTOMATED ON-FARM BIOGAS PRODUCTION

IN SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO, CANADA

April 2020

BACKGROUND AND OPPORTUNITY

Canada has 37 operating on-farm anaerobic digestion systems, with most of these located on larger dairy farms in the Province of Ontario. To date, the Province of Ontario has had the most supportive policies, programs and incentives to develop biogas production, including both a cost-shared financial assistance program and feed-in-tariff (FIT) system. Its FIT and micro FIT programs have offered the highest rates for electricity produced from biogas of any province.

The first farm to connect to the Province’s electricity grid, in 2003, was Fepro Farms located in Foresters Falls. This 290 cow dairy farm installed a biogas system produced in Switzerland, manufactured by Thomas Böhni Energie & Umwelt. Subsequent to this, Ontario’s capital support program and green power incentives led to the construction of 30 on-farm anaerobic digesters. The most significant adopters were larger dairy farms, with 250 to 1,000 head of cows, that co-digest dairy manure with locally available organic material from restaurants, grocery stores, abattoirs and food processors. With a more decarbonized electricity grid in Ontario and the ending of the FIT program, larger farms are now investigating the production of renewable natural gas (biomethane). Under the current energy and climate change policy framework, biogas upgrading is financially viable only at a large scale of production. This leaves smaller livestock farms with very few options to adopt anaerobic digestion (AD) systems.

MICRO BIOGAS CONCEPT

The micro biogas concept emerged in Europe about 10 years ago, and has been demonstrated in a variety of system designs. These are small scale AD systems, typically in the 5 to 50 kW range, that produce biogas from a single feedstock source to meet the farm’s energy needs. Many of the EU systems are agriculture based, located on smaller farms. One of the main motivations for building micro scale systems was the high cost of co-substrates such as food waste that had been inexpensive or even cost negative years ago but now had become more difficult to procure. Smaller biogas systems allowed farmers to derive the many benefits of AD technology, such as manure valorization, pathogen reduction, improved nutrient availability and new revenue streams, without incurring the extra manag