It's easy to find reasons why anaerobic digestion won't work. Biogas never was and likely never will be a quick and easy panacea to manure or energy problems. As part of a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture project, we are evaluating how anaerobic digestion can be used to help Pennsylvania farms be better neighbors and the impact of this technology on the financial, managerial, and environmental health of Pennsylvania farms. For me this also means reevaluating how I look at biogas technology. Successful biogas systems function because of the determination, hard work, and skill of the owner operators.
Biogas systems are still better suited for larger operations.
Biogas systems with significant public funding tend to fail after the money runs out. Replacement of purchased electricity with biogas produced power provide higher pay back than selling it back to the power company. Highway transport of raw liquid manure is an expensive and challenging operation and makes central manure processing costly. Power companies do not encourage small scale electricity production. Required management time and talents compete with farm profit centers.