Comment Log Display

[The following was a comment/question submitted by email at the
August 21, 2017 Subgroup #1 Meeting]

From: Steve McCorkle
Affiliation: Ag Waste Solutions

This is Steve McCorkle, CEO of Ag Waste Solutions. The
presentations and comments today were excellent, and most of them
appear to acknowledge that most of the methane generated from
manure management practices is from the lagoons, settling basins,
transportation/storage, composting, and land application. If we are
able to keep the volatile solids from ever reaching the lagoon,
using very effective solids separation techniques to separate the
solids when the manure is fresh and has not had the opportunity to
anaerobically decay, we then achieve one of the methane reduction
objectives. If we then gasify the solids in a CA permitted
pyrolysis device to produce a nutrient-rich carbon sequestration
biochar, we have eliminated the most significant methane emissions
from manure management. 

We believe that pyrolysis/gasification as an alternative technology
should be accelerated in timing as a focus of this group due to its
significant potential to reduce methane emissions from CA dairies.
We also need CARB to accelerate the measurement techniques and
evaluation metrics to evaluate carbon credits and methane
reductions from the pyrolysis/gasification of manure. Pyrolysis and
gasification can also be utilized in conjunction with AD systems to
gasify the digestate, which contains over 50% of the original
carbon from the manure, to produce clean energy and/or a
nutrient-rich biochar from the digestate.