Turning Manure Into A Revenue Stream

Dairy manure is an excellent byproduct for fertilizer use. However, a company called Circularity has taken that a step further. The company has completed the first end-to-end conversion of raw agricultural biogas into sustainable aviation fuel, better known as an SAF.

Dr. Stephen Beaton, the founder and CEO of Circularity, said farmers have known for a long time that biogas has a lot of potential value.

"There has been, over the past two decades, an increasing trend to monetize that biogas, which not only provides an additional revenue stream, but also enhances the fertilizer content of the manure, right? The digestate is actually a richer fertilizer than if the biogas were not removed, so biogas has always been known to be a valuable side product," Beaton said. "And for a long time, the only way really to monetize that biogas is to either generate power with biogas or to separate the carbon dioxide from the biogas, so you have pure methane, and then inject the methane into a pipeline as renewable natural gas.”

He said Circularity has come up with yet another use for biogas.

“So, what we propose is a third alternative to take that biogas, combine the methane and CO2 through two of our proprietary reactors to make jet fuel, and that jet fuel, because it comes from biogas, is known as sustainable aviation fuel," Beaton said. "It's something that's in great demand throughout the United States, but also in Europe, the UK, and the world, as the world has realized that the supply of fossil jet fuel is incredibly tenuous, given all the geopolitical tensions happening in the Middle East, and the only way to make flying sustainable is through things like sustainable aviation fuel.”

This, he said, could be another good opportunity for farmers to add a revenue stream.

“So that's what we're telling farmers, you know, we'll take the biogas, and we're presenting another option to farmers if RNG isn't an option, if you're far away from a pipeline, if market dynamics don't allow you to monetize that biogas in another route, we can take that biogas and convert it to liquid fuels,” Beaton said.

Circularity Fuels designs and builds reactors that convert waste biogas into jet fuel. Click Here to learn more.