Sioux Center, Iowa — This winter, many Sioux Center business- and homeowners will be heating their homes and businesses with natural gas that partially comes from cow manure. In fact, the equipment and pipe have been connected, and the gas made from manure is already part of Sioux Center’s natural gas.
Sioux Center Assistant Utilities Manager Adam Fedders says that locally-produced renewable natural gas is a great way for the city to partner with the county and the ag community. He tells us how the project got started, almost three years ago.
He says the simplified version is the manure is filtered and strained, bacteria are added, and a biogas product is produced. That gas is cleaned to a certain specification, processed and pressurized and is piped into the Sioux Center system. He says the City and the company both have monitoring equipment to make sure the gas is up to spec.
He says it makes just a little more work for their department, but on the customer side, people shouldn’t notice any difference, and as a whole, it’s good for the community.
He says they also may be interested in expanding their renewable natural gas usage.
Fedders says he’s not aware of any other northwest Iowa communities or municipal gas departments partnering with farmers like this, but he says the natural gas wholesalers are starting to partner with setups such as this.
