Integrating regional transportation and ecological factors into anaerobic digestion siting decisions

The aim of this research was to develop methods to identify potential sites for anaerobic digestation facilities that source wasted food from commercial generators and manure from dairy farms in Western New York State. The specific methodology is described in the associated publication. We first identified theoretically potential sites for new facilities using an exclusionary process. We estimated availability of wasted food and manure within a given radius of each potential site, using phosphorus equivalents. We then assessed the potential phosphorus demand of cropland within a given transportation radius from the site in order to evaluate the acceptance capacity for residual digestate. The balance between acceptance capacity and digestate availability was evaluated in order to identify locations with excess fertilization potential. We used Esri ArcMap 10.6 to complete the environmental assessment using the projected coordinate system UTM Zone 18N with a raster grid of 30 m x 30 m cells.