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Partnership allows farmers to run tractors on their home-grown fuel

A partnership has developed a way for farmers to run a tractor on their own farm-produced fuel. 

The partnership between UK-based Bennamann Ltd. And New Holland

Combines the technology to capture, process, store, distribute, and use the methane gas that normally escapes from manure into the atmosphere.

Tom Taylor with Bennamann says they have the technology to collect and store methane gas from manure lagoons. “We store directly above the lagoon in kind-of a lung. It’s a variable space chamber, the CO2 and the methane, and periodically when the buffer fills up, we can come around with mobile equipment, the refinery equipment, and take that gas down, strip out the CO2 to get the methane up to vehicle-grade, and then you put it in tractors, you can use it in generator sets, or it can be used for commercial heating in a burner.”

After a few prototypes from 2013 to now, Joe Boufford from New Holland says their new T6 tractor can utilize that methane. “It is a T6 180 methane-powered tractor. It specs to 175 horsepower and 125 PTO horsepower with much lower emissions than a TR4B diesel, 80% less than a diesel version. It’s huge for the industry.”

Boufford tells Brownfield the tractor runs cleaner and generates 98% less particulate matter, 17% less nitrous oxide, and 15% less carbon dioxide. Taylor says the methane capture and storage technology is available now, and most dairy farms make more than enough methane to power their farm.

Taylor and Boufford spoke to Brownfield during World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.