Cow manure from West Valley dairy will be turned into natural gas

PHOENIX – A sus­tain­able ener­gy com­pa­ny is set­ting up oper­a­tions at a West Val­ley dairy to con­vert cow manure into a fuel source.

Avol­ta broke ground Tues­day at the But­ter­field Dairy in Buck­eye and expects to start pro­duc­ing renew­able nat­ur­al gas before the end of the year, accord­ing to a press release.

The com­pa­ny is also plan­ning a facil­i­ty at the Milky­way Dairy in Mari­co­pa, which should be pro­duc­ing by ear­ly 2022.

Avol­ta expects to make bio­gas out of 110,000 tons of manure a year from 50,000 cows at the two sites, accord­ing to the release.

Bio­gas is pro­duced when manure under­goes a digest­ing process that releas­es methane, which is then upgrad­ed into pipeline qual­i­ty gas, accord­ing to the release.

The prod­uct cre­at­ed at the Ari­zona dairies will be deliv­ered to the South­west Gas pipeline.

Nacelle Solu­tions, a tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vice com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in gas con­di­tion­ing, will run the operations.

“Since our fam­i­ly began farm­ing in 1620, we have con­tin­u­ous­ly improved our oper­a­tions and process­es to remain com­pet­i­tive and be a good stew­ard of the land,” But­ter­field Dairy own­er Tom­my de Jong Sr. said in the release.

“Most recent­ly we designed But­ter­field Dairy to be car­bon neu­tral through man­ag­ing our water to sup­port crops and cap­ture car­bon dioxide.”