By Brook Stockberger

As you travel on Interstate 10 south of Las Cruces near Mesquite, the discernible aroma of cow is often in the air. Now that smell could be a multimillion dollar business that helps the environment as well.

R-Qubed Energy, a New Mexico-registered company operated by a group of El Paso business folks, hopes to break ground this summer on a $74 million, 11-acre plant that will employ 80 to 90 full-time workers and turn methane from cow manure into energy.

And, oh yeah, the process could cut down on the odor in the area by collecting up the manure. Sound too good to be true? Michael Weatherly, who owns Buena Vista farm in Mesquite, believes in the process. He is selling land to R-Qubed to build the facility. “You have the cows and they produce manure (and) people have complained about the odor of the dairies,” Weatherly said. “This is kind of a win-win for everybody. It takes our dairy waste and converts it into energy. It’s just better for the communities and the neighbors.”

The company already has a deal to sell gas to PNM, the utility company that provides electricity to much of the state, although not Dona Ana County.

Lori Hughes, manager director with R-Qubed, said that the company researched a variety of places, but that the location of multiple dairy farms near Mesquite made the most sense. “Within about 16 miles, you have between 40 and 50,000 cows,” she said. “And of course you’ve got the waste stream here 24/7, it just doesn’t stop.”

John Davis with the company said that, as green source of energy, this will be one of the most consistent. “Wind will produce as long as wind blows and sun as long as the sun shines but biogas is a very stable, 24/7 product,” Davis said.

The plant will be built by Austrian-based company Entec Biogas GMBH. It will be constructed in four quadrants, with the first scheduled to break ground in June or July.

Manure will be captured and piped to the plant, into what is called a digester. There, it will spend about 30 days in a one of several, 60-foot tanks, where it will be constantly stirred and kept at a temperature of about 100 degrees. The methane released will be routed through a pipe in the top of the tank, go through a scrubbing process and sent on its way to a PNM transmission pipe.

“It’s like a continuation of a cow’s stomach,” Davis said. “It works on the microbes that are already in the manure, so putting it in digester is just continuing the process.”

After 30 days, much of the manure will have been degraded, or converted to methane, and what Hughes called the “slurry” left behind will then be pumped into a centrifuge to separate liquid from solid. The solid will be collected for compost and the liquid will either be used for fertilizer or pumped to a water treatment facility there. In fact, the composting and water treatment process are every bit as important to the company as the methane collection.

“It is not economically viable as a commercial operation based on energy alone,” Hughes said. “There had to be other revenue streams that were developed; that brings in the composting and water side of that.”

In addition, carbon dioxide is also produced during the process, and that gas can be sold as well, for use in oil wells to help push oil out of the ground or even to Sapphire Energy, which is producing algae in Las Cruces in hopes of extracting oil from the plant-like organism. In return, Keith Hughes with the company said that algae left over by the process can be composted at the plant.

R-Qubed is not the only group in the area working on the manure-to-energy angle. New Mexico State University researchers Zohrab Samani and Adrian Hanson have developed a digester system as well.

The school reports that it received a $321,000 grant that will enable the researchers to build a full-scale digester system to test their process. The model digester will be built in La Mesa, where a local grower will use this electricity to heat greenhouses and will use a byproduct compost to help grow plants.

Hughes said that the idea, which has been in use in Europe for years, is catching on in the area, although the understanding of the process is still in its infancy. The point was driven home when the company made a presentation to government officials in Santa Fe. “We did a presentation up at the Roundhouse and one of the comments made was, ‘This better not be a scam,’” he said.

If R-Qubed vision comes true, one day when you flip your light switch, you could just have Bessy to thank.

The solar project announcement follows an announcement by R-Qubed Energy that it plans to build a $75 million biogas plant between Vado and Berino. The plant will convert cow manure from the local dairies into methane gas. The gas will be sold to PNM. Other by-products from the plant will include fertilizer, compost and recycled effluent water for re-use on farms. The announcement was one of the front-page stories in the June 5 edition of the New Mexico Business Weekly. Sapphire Energy’s $100 million investment in green crude from algae was also covered on the front-page of the edition.