New biogas facility: The Ruckman Farm, owned by Smithfield Farms, will be the center of a facility using hog waste to produce biogas that will flow into a nearby natural gas pipeline.
A biogas plant under development in Gentry County could make northern Missouri a major player in the development of alternative fuels.
The St. Louis-based Roeslein Alternative Energy has joined Smithfield Farms in the opening of a plant producing natural gas from hog waste at the Ruckman Farm, northwest of Albany. The partnership also plans to use native grass grown at the Dunn Ranch, near Hatfield, for research into another type of alternative fuel.
The opening of the biogas facility was unveiled at a celebration Wednesday at the Smithfield Education Center, north of Princeton. Smithfield offered bus tours to the Ruckman Farm facility.
Roeslein Alternative Energy said the facility will create and inject large quantities of renewable natural gas into the national grid system. Construction of the $120 million biogas project began in 2014.
The project revolves around the installation of impermeable covers and flare systems on 88 existing manure lagoons at Smithfield’s hog finishing farm in northern Missouri. Roeslein said the covers reduce greenhouse gases, keep rain out of lagoons and reduce odor.
One of the reasons that the Ruckman Farm was chosen as the first production site is its close proximity to the ANR natural gas pipeline that crosses the farm.
“The technology we have developed is ready to be deployed commercially in a project that makes both economic sense and environmental sense,” said Rudi Roeslein, founder and president of Roeslein Alternative Energy.
Smithfield raises up to two million hogs annually on its Missouri farms.
According to the St. Joseph News-Press, the Nature Conservancy has offered 1,000 acres of the Dunn Ranch for research in using native grass for alternative fuels.
In an earlier announcement about the biogas plant, Blake Boxley, director of environmental health and safety for Smithfield, said, “This project will show how farmers can do more than produce food. We can make energy, we can reduce waste and we can be good stewards for most important resources—land and water.”