News article, 24. February 2023

Methane burning reduces carbon footprint from pig production

Danish agriculture is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and new green technologies are an important part of the solution.

Promising results for pig production
AgroGas has been developing the technology for gas extraction from landfills in Denmark for more than 20 years. Some three years ago, the company set up the first plant for conducting trials in collaboration with a piglet producer. Through subsequent adaptation, the company can now offer the agricultural sector the opportunity to prevent methane gas escaping into the atmosphere. The methane is collected from slurry tanks, then burned off by a gas flare which converts it to water and CO2. Despite the technology’s promising results, AgroGas is still developing a way in which they can also collect the CO2 emitted by burning the methane gas.

According to AgroGas, the CO2e footprint can be reduced by between 10-20% for pig production, which in Denmark alone will correspond to more than 1 million tonnes of CO2e reduction from pig production. The direct effect can be measured through a technology that can calculate the amount of destroyed methane from total emissions and thus calculate the reduced climate impact.

Exciting collaboration prepares the ground for further development
In collaboration with Danish Crown, AgroGas has the opportunity to test the technology on a large scale and will start investigating the possibility of using the methane gas from slurry tanks for the production of electricity and heat. Moreover, the technology has become part of the Low Emission Slurry Storage project under the government’s Green Development and Demonstration Programme, which will validate the effect of the technology with the aim of getting on the list of the future’s most promising technologies for reducing methane emissions.