Elizabeth Elmstrom

5/8/12

This semester I spent 30 hours working with Avatar Energy located in South Burlington, Vermont. Avatar Energy is a renewable energy company that works with local farms to convert their cow manure to “bio-gas”. This bio-gas is either converted to energy and used by the local farms or sold on the renewable energy market. The left over solids from the digester are often sold by the farmers or used for animal bedding, compost or as fuel. While this process is very efficient, Avatar is continuing to do research to improve their digester. They are experimenting with different types of manure from different feeding regiments to see what methanogens prefer to break down. My work with Avatar was primarily aiding in this kind of research. I mostly worked in the lab, doing microbial counts, microscopy, and total and volatile solid analysis. Data gathered from these procedures will help Avatar to see what kind of methanogens are present, how many are present and how efficient they are at breaking down the manure. Certain methanogens complete decomposition faster than others, and for this reason it is important that we know what feeds provide the best environment. From this data, Avatar can improve their digester and create more bio-gas at a quicker rate. In addition to lab work, I also helped to maintain their experimental digester set-up, which is also located in their shop in South Burlington. This mostly included a lot of cleaning of large glass bottles where the effluent had been digesting. I cleaned different parts of actual digesters that had been broken down for the use of future set-ups. I was also able to make it out to one of Avatar’s sites in Stowe at the Keewaydin Dairy Farm. After the original installation by Avatar the farmer has continued working with Avatar to sustain himself off his anaerobic digester and should soon be feeding back to the grid.

Guy Roberts

AVATAR Energy Vermont 


Research and Development 


12 Gregory Drive, Unit 6


South Burlington, VT 05403


(802) 651-4776