Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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INNOVATORS Fair Oaks Farms purchased 42 CNG tractors and subleased the milk delivery operation to Ruan Transportation. FAIR OAKS FARMS Fair Oaks, Ind. Closing the loop are compatible, agriculture and animal welfare are compatible, and – in our case – milk is good for you." Today, Fair Oaks Farms owns 30,000 acres and 32,000 milk cows. While the F operation generates a lot of milk, it also generates a lot of manure. But company executives see a lot of potential in the byproduct. "A cow is an amazing animal," says Corbett. "You give it 100 pounds of feed and 30 gallons of water per day, and it will give you 100 or more pounds of milk and 140 to 150 pounds of manure. You can view all that manure as a liability or a contaminant – as many people do – but we chose to look at it as an opportunity." Fair Oaks Farms' first organic waste project was using anaerobic digesters to break down manure to create biogas containing 60 percent methane suitable for running gas-fired generators. With the digesters, the company was able to provide itself with 100 percent of its electrical needs. Four years ago, when natural gas traded between $12 and $13 a gallon, Fair Oaks Farms started looking at taking the project a step further to convert the biogas into natural gas. "The idea was we could clean the gas and put it in the pipeline and make more money doing that than we could selling electricity back onto the grid," says Mark Stoermann, project manager. But as the project began, the fracking industry took off, and natural gas prices plummeted to $3. Fair Oaks Farms sees opportunity in animal waste BY JEFF CRISSEY air Oaks Farms, a consortium of nine dairy families in northwest Indiana, always has taken sustainability seriously since it was founded in 1998. Since day one, the company has had three driving strategies, says Gary Corbett, chief executive officer: "That agriculture and the environment Creating CNG After Fair Oaks Farms had spent consid- erable time in the project, it looked at new potential ways to use natural gas. The company saw an ideal partnership between an industry that needs steady customers to support building out a compressed natural gas infrastructure and an industry needing a steady infrastructure to support its hauling needs. "We looked at the disconnect between transportation fuel and the natural gas market," says Stoermann. "Cows milk every day, so we have to move milk every day." Fair Oaks Farms decided to press on with its natural gas conversion efforts, purchasing and installing scrubbing equipment that converts biogas into biomethane natural gas by removing carbon dioxide and hydro- gen sulfides. The biomethane then is odorized to create renewable natural gas suitable for use in CNG-powered trucks. While any natural gas can be used for CNG, the conversion of natural gas that has renewable attributes qualifies The dairy producer and milk hauler creates enough renewable natural gas from its dairy operation to fuel 42 CNG tractors. COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2012 49