83 Smithfield lagoons in Missouri now producing renewable natural gas

All of the Smithfield Foods hog finishing farms at six different sites in northern Missouri are now producing renewable natural gas (RNG), says Rudi Roeslein, owner of Roeslein Alternative Energy. His company covered 83 lagoons and installed eight gas purification systems capable of producing 800,000 dekatherms of RNG into four different high-pressure natural gas interconnections, says Roeslein.

Roeslein has also completed 26 new lagoon digesters for Smithfield in Milford, Utah, he says. This project includes over 30 miles of on-farm and off-farm piping to move the RNG into the connection point. "We will be continuing our projects this year in Arizona, Virginia, Iowa, Texas, and possibly several more states," says Roeslein.

"It has been a long and crooked road to get to this point, but it was a journey worth all of the challenges and the opportunities those challenges uncovered," he says.

Roeslein will be installing its first Horizon 2 digester systems this year to start the process of converting native grasses, forbs, and cover crops into RNG. "This will bring many challenges to our team, and we will meet them and succeed," he says. "I am looking forward to the next 10 years and how our company and partnerships will provide solutions not only for renewable energy, but for ecological services, wildlife habitat, and a holistic use of our land and our natural resources."