March 6, 2022. Digested Organics, based in Plymouth, Michigan, has begun construction of the BC Organics Nutrient Concentration & Water Reclamation (NCWR) Facility. This state-of-the-art treatment plant utilizes unique membrane filtration equipment to process nearly 1,000,000 gallons per day of digested dairy manure and return over 400,000 gallons per day of clean water to the environment. The NCWR Facility is part of a large anaerobic digestion project called BC Organics being designed, owned and operated by Dynamic. Raw manure from numerous dairy farms will be pumped and trucked to the facility for digestion in 16 above ground tanks, capturing methane which is purified and injected into nearby natural gas pipelines as Renewable Natural Gas (RNG).
By removing nearly half of the digestate volume as clean water, the facility helps reduce the number of trucks moving digestate and minimizes the volume of material participating farms have to lagoon store and then land apply each year. Since the farms receive back more concentrated liquid digestate, they save money on land application, can use the liquid fertilizer in a more targeted fashion when needed (thereby helping to reduce runoff), and haul it to fields further away that traditionally receive less manure-based fertilizer.
Since a large fraction of farm-based nutrient runoff occurs when manure is applied during the winter or close to precipitation events, having about half the volume of material to store and apply provides farmers increased flexibility to apply the concentrated digestate during the most optimal weather conditions and at the best times for crop nutrient uptake. Another benefit of digestate treatment is additional removal of organic matter that could otherwise continue to degrade anaerobically in an open lagoon and contribute to global warming through methane emissions. The NCWR Facility will help the project improve (lower) its carbon intensity score, making the RNG it produces more valuable.