It seems more farmers are turning to machines that turn their waste into bio fuel.

And a group of UW-Stout engineering students are working on their own methane digester model that they hope will one day be used at their school every day.

The 9 member engineering class will be graduating in a few weeks. This semester’s project was to create a scaled down version of a methane digester, modeled after Elk Mound's 5 Star Dairy's 750,000 gallon digester.

These Stout seniors say the creation of their digester has inspired them. UW-Stout senior Robin Schulte says, “Especially at Stout they’re always looking at new technology, which is what engineering is all about, new technology, new ideas.” Fellow student Mellissa Vircks says, “We've had to work very hard, very fast on it.”

Methane is a greenhouse gas that, like carbon dioxide, can occur naturally, but are key pollutants in our atmosphere.

Vircks says, “It's already being produced by cows, and our landfills, so if you can collect it and find a use for it, then there’s that much less that goes into the atmosphere.”

The student’s project was to create a working methane digester, which would turn manure into methane, which could then be used to create power or heat.

Vircks says she thinks, “If we were ale to prove that it would be a good thing for Stout to do -- then maybe they could build a bigger one and use it for energy.”

Vircks and Schulte say they hope their digester can later be converted to process UW-Stouts cafeteria waste. Schulte says, “Once you purify the methane that comes out of a digester, it’s basically line quality natural gas, so you could heat your home with it, or run a little car with it.”

Or as these students hope, that it can be used to power the university as opposed to the coal system it uses now.

The students say the digester is a zero waste system -- the only cost is the initial investment to buy the digester. Schulte says, “With any new technology, the more work done on it making it more cost efficient and developing it, the cheaper it'll get.”

The students say next semester’s project will work with the methane the digester has created, and determine how to corral that methane into useable energy.