Written by Paul Gaudette
A crowd gathered at Volleman’s Family Farm Thursday, June 20 for a ribbon cutting as the celebrated bottled milk business and dairy made a commitment to lessening environmental impact by safely harvesting gas to help provide power to their neighbors.
This is done through a newly completed dairy digester. This digester captures greenhouse gases from the manure of the dairy’s over 5,000 cows and transforms it into usable natural gas for trucks, homes and electricity.
Partnering with Maas Energy Works, the nation’s largest dairy digester developer, the Volleman’s project involved constructing a custom biogas facility using a covered lagoon and membrane technology.
This cover creates an anaerobic (oxygenfree) environment where bacteria breaks down the organic material in the manure, producing biogas primarily composed of methane and carbon dioxide.
The biogas is then extracted through a piping system and processed to remove impurities such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, resulting in renewable natural gas ( RNG).
The purified gas is carried through a 3.5-mile underground pipeline and handed off to Atmos Energy, which supplies the town of Gustine and surrounding areas with natural gas. This pipeline interconnection has been designed to add other central Texas dairy digester projects as the industry expands.
Projected to produce approximately 640,000 gallons of diesel gas equivalent (DGE) per year, equivalent to removing 5,000 cars from the road and significantly reducing emissions, this initiative also injects millions of capital investment into the Texas economy and creates employment opportunities for local contractors. Supporting local businesses aligns with the Vollemans’ ethos of supporting the regional economy and fostering community growth.
Frank Volleman, owner of Volleman’s Family Farm, added, “Our family is proud of our ability to provide glass-bottle milk to our customers. Now, we can expand our environmentallyconscious practices with on-farm energy.”
Daryl Maas, Founder and CEO of Maas Energy Works, added, “We love creating value from what dairy farmers already do by generating renewable energy in addition to producing milk and protein.”
Those present for the Comanche Chamber of Commerce- sponsored ribbon cutting at the digester site were able to survey the machinery and see the amount of land and effort that both Volleman’s have put into the project as several spoke about the construction and the benefits of the new system.
Among them was the construction manager for the project who reported that the 13-month project injected $6 million into the local economy.
Committed to improving environmental stewardship, the digester is the latest sustainability initiative the Vollemans have implemented on their family farm. Some of these other initiatives include conserving water by reusing it three to four times in various areas on the farm or implementing regenerative farming practices to ensure a healthy soil environment.
These efforts also include other impactful dairy changes, such as switching from plastic milk jugs to reusable glass containers in order to reduce landfill waste.