New Holland Agriculture has unveiled a new tractor designed to run on fuel generated on-site using cow dung. The T7 Methane Power LNG offers the same power and torque as a diesel tractor, but is part of a system that can significantly reduce emissions.
The system, which New Holland has partnered with British company Bennamann, works roughly like this: Farmers collect as much cow dung as slurry and pump it into large tanks or cover lagoons instead of using it directly as fertilizer. Anaerobes feed on this lumpy, thick shake to produce biogas, mostly containing methane.
This gas is collected and refined into biomethane, which can be used around the farm wherever natural gas is normally used. Alternatively, it can be compressed and liquefied into LNG or liquefied natural gas, which must be stored in cryogenic tanks at -162 °C (-260 °F). It can be sold as a product or used directly to run specially tuned engines. The solid content of garbage is used as fertilizer.
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The T7 Methane Power LNG is currently a concept tractor, but New Holland says it’s the world’s first tractor designed to run on LNG, allowing farmers to create their own fuel.
According to this 2018 study from Applied Energy, the high cost of equipment required to refine and liquefy biogas makes biomethane production and sales economically viable only if you have approximately 3,600 or more cattle. begin to make sense. Benaman seems to have a solution here in the form of a mobile device that allows him to move from farm to farm and convert regularly captured biogas into LNG. The company also sells the cryogenic tank systems needed to keep the LNG at a constant temperature.
How much LNG can you expect from a given number of cows, and at what point does a system like this become profitable? Much depends on how much time they spend in the pasture, as opposed to barns and stables, which can be easily assembled. , is highly dependent on individual operations, but Bennamann says its approach is designed to be profitable for “livestock farms of all sizes.”
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However, in an environmental sense, the impact is significant. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short term. Over a period of 20 years, one kilogram of methane in the air produces a warming effect that is over 80 times more potent than one kilogram of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide overtakes it only on a scale of thousands of years. This is because methane is decomposed. go down faster.
Capturing all the methane emitted from cow dung, converting it to LNG and running it through a tractor engine is not a completely clean process. Tractor exhaust still contains carbon dioxide. However, by effectively capturing and converting large amounts of methane emissions into carbon dioxide emissions, and preventing the burning of the fossil fuels that would otherwise power the tractors, the environmental impact would be greatly improved. According to New Holland, “His CO2 reductions for a farm with 120 cows could be equivalent to about 100 Western homes.”
Watch the video below.
New Holland T7 Methane Power. The world’s first liquefied methane powered tractor.
Source: New Holland, Benaman
