Turning Manure into Money: Vermont Organics Reclamation seeks to replace disposal with product creation
It would be easy to think of Williston-based Vermont Organics Reclamation as an agricultural business, since its first phase will be to improve the processing of manure. And manure will always be a major resource for their recycling of unused plant nutrients.
But the project that Tim Camisa has been conceptualizing since 2001 and actively developing with partner Mike Rooney since 2005 seeks a more comprehensive change in the way Vermont maintains and grows its economy. It’s a vision that VOR has pursued through five patents, four generations of processing equipment, three grant applications involving two agencies, and the arrival of a private equity backer.
The futuristic part of their planning would involve the acquisition or extension of rail sidings in a variety of locations around the state, for the placement of collection cars that would then transport recyclable organic materials to a central facility they have begun to put together in St Albans. In brief, their analysis indicates that the state is thinking too much in terms of disposal for biological byproducts, instead of seeing them as a resource that could be the foundation for exports to other states, the importing of dollars, and the creation of much-needed jobs.
For now, however, there is plenty of work to do helping dairy farms become cleaner and more profitable. If the only result were to end the phosphorus pollution that threatens to clog parts of Lake Champlain with mats of obnoxious and destructive algae, VOR will have scored a major success – but that is only a byproduct, so to speak, of what they envision.
On To M-Arrs
VOR believes that, “With a collaborative effort, everyone could have a vested interest in revolutionizing agriculture.”
Their own description of the alternative makes it clear how much research and development stands behind their methodology. Camisa studied mathematics at UVM, Rooney studied business, and both backgrounds show in a prospectus for farmers subtitled “Turning waste into your gain.”
“In the search for a non-chemical organic treatment, VOR identified the technology of electro-coagulation as well as a hybrid of techniques used in municipal wastewater treatment to be effective in processing dairy manure,” begins an introductory section. Then, well aware that farmers want to know the practical details, it proceeds to the technical side.
“Manure is lifted out of the pit (note: this is in the demonstration phase; ultimately farms can acquire the equipment and handle this on a more frequent basis) and pumped to a static screen separator and screw press to accomplish liquid separation (so that) 85 percent of the phosphorus is separated into the liquid fraction. This liquid is then run through an electro-coagulator which coagulates the dissolved phosphorus into large particles which precipitate to the bottom of our hybrid atmospheric clarifier.
“The clarifier builds up a one-micron filter bed from the coagulated solids, and sludge is wasted from this filter bed containing three times the concentration of phosphorus. Not only does the process isolate phosphorus in sludge, it also eliminates a high percentage of bacteria and odor typically found in manure and creates stronger nutrient bonds less prone to runoff and volatilization.”
Another company statement sums up the results for client dairies: “VOR’s technology transforms the raw manure into sludge and solids readily suitable for fertilizer and virtually phosphorus free “grey” water for irrigation, wash down, or infiltration.”
Interviewed, Camisa said that today’s dairy farms typically have so many cows for their size that the plants growing on the available land can’t take up all the nutrients that the cows – relatively inefficient processors of their feed – do not utilize. Under state regulations, farms need to have nutrient management plans, and VOR will work with farmers using the plan method to determine how many pounds of excess phosphorus they are generating.
Camisa said this kind of integration with water quality efforts is one reason that the Vermont Department of Agriculture has been working with them (something confirmed by Robert Achilles, an engineer who is their section chief for agricultural water quality). They have obtained one grant from that department for $25,000, and another federal-state grant of $175,000 through the Natural Resource Conservation Service, Camisa said, and have applied for more NRCS funding.
VOR captures the excess nutrients, for its own recycling processes, rather than the waterways leading to Lake Champlain. No, Camisa said, they don’t plan to set up a composting operation. To get the right bacterial activity, the ingredients need to be about 75 percent water and 25 percent solids. Unfortunately for the nutrient management side of the process, both nitrogen and phosphorus are water-soluble, and a good deal of both escapes, he said.
As for the field application of manure, in Camisa’s view it’s a disposal method, not a fertilizing method, because cow manure is such a weak fertilizer; for instance, there are only six pounds of nitrogen in a ton of it. But nitrogen isn’t the issue for lake water quality, he said, because the algae mats can get nitrogen from the air (nitrogen constitutes about 80 percent of the atmosphere) as well as from the water. In fact, he said, the mats will sink or float depending on the angle of the sun and which nitrogen source is easiest to access.
The grant VOR now seeks, from the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the US Department of Agriculture (Vermont headquarters in Colchester, field personnel in four zones), would provide $583,000 of the estimated $1,167,000 cost of setting up a pilot project centered around improving the water quality of St Albans Bay. Franklin County is one of Vermont’s foremost dairy regions, and Camisa said 138 farmsteads are within the 15-foot-deep bay’s drainage basin.
VOR wants to go to these farms and show them “a physically measurable reduction” in their phosphorus load, Camisa said. Besides demonstrating that their M-ARRS system (stands for Mobile Agricultural Resource Recovery System) can ease the pressures of meeting nutrient runoff regulations by removing about 11 percent of their manure containing 33 percent of their phosphorus, while providing the cows with usable bedding and the dairy with washdown-quality graywater, VOR hopes to make a visible difference in St. Albans Bay – then go to the other compromised watersheds in Vermont, all of which VOR has already mapped out--and remove about 100 tons of phosphorus each year from the state’s environment.
For the individual farm, VOR can use the farm’s soil tests and other data to do a field/crop analysis and calculate the P2O5 reduction requirement. The prospectus includes a sample spreadsheet showing the results of such an analysis for a 100-cow operation.
Also, there is a M-ARRS Phosphorus Take Away Tool, which analyzes gallons of manure, pounds of phosphorus reduction, and gallons of sludge removal for annual, semi-annual, and quarterly VOR visits to the farm. For dairies with 600 cows or more, the numbers assume that the farm has purchased and installed ARRS equipment – something Camisa said would repay itself in three to four years.
The organic part of this – certifiably organic, VOR hopes – is that their way of removing the nutrients from the waste stream is electrical, not chemical, Camisa said. Wastewater treatment plants typically add chemicals, then have to send the resulting sludge out of state, where it is either landfilled or incinerated. (When VOR adapts its processes to wastewater treatment plant excesses, that will in a business completely separated from the present venture, Camisa said.)
The solids that come out of the VOR treatment can be used as a soil amendment or a biofuel, but also are safe to use for cow bedding – a big concern for dairy farmers now that competition for sawdust and shavings from pellet fuel mills has pushed the price of a tractor-trailer load of the stuff to about $2,500, he said.
Recently, Monument Farms in Weybridge, which bottles milk and sells it as well as producing raw milk, decided to install a manure digester. Their main reason, they said, was not to save on electrical costs by joining the “Cow Power” initiative, but to reduce their bedding costs – since digesters, like VOR’s process, create safe solid material as an end product.
But digesters don’t address the global climate change crisis, Camisa said. Methane is generated best at about 100 degrees and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, temperatures typical of digesters, so they do a good job of producing methane, which is then burned to drive a generator. But the burning process produces carbon dioxide as well as electricity, he observed – adding to global warming.
Worldwide, according to the United Nations report “The Carbon Hoofprint of the Cow,” cars are responsible for 11 percent of carbon emissions, while livestock accounts for 18 percent, Camisa said. A herd of 500 cows produces about 10,000 gallons of waste a day (that’s 20 gallons per cow), he said – but with scientific recycling of the nutrients those 500 cows can drive 20 greenhouses and produce $2 million in annual plant sales.
VOR is setting up a greenhouse of its own, not to produce the usual bedding plants that get put out annually in gardens, but to do tissue cultures of varieties adapted to northern climates for stream bank erosion restoration and similar projects, Camisa said.
Show And (Not) Smell
About 100 farmers learned about VOR at the 2009 Farm Show in Barre, and according to the company, many of them signed up to be notified when the fourth generation demo machine was ready to go. Camisa said that automated system may be in operation by the time Vermont Business Magazine’s June issue comes out; those interested can call 881-0012 or email to reclaimvermont@earthlink.net.
For Vermont generally, VOR has some searching questions as to what is being wasted and what Vermont resources remain untapped. For farmers, they have a simple question: “When would you like us to take away manure that you do not need?”
Ed Barna is a freelance writer from Middlebury.
