HEREFORD, Texas -- Piles of cow manure that were once considered an environmental problem now hold the promise of power, NBC 5 reported.Video:Cow Manure Put To Use At Energy PlantPanda Ethanol has spent more than $250 million building an ethanol plant in Hereford, Texas, that will burn the manure as fuel. When the plant is up and running, the first-of-its kind facility will burn one billion pounds of manure every year.
"The demand for ethanol is very strong right now," said Darol Lindloff of Panda Ethanol.The ethanol plant is expected to be up and running in the next few months and the company plans to build another one just like it in Sherman, Texas.In West Texas where the plant is under construction feed yards stretch as far as the eye can see. One is owned by the city's Mayor Bob Josserand."There's a million head of cattle on feed, which is the largest concentration of cattle in the world," Josserand said.All of those animals produce mountains of manure."We've called this the Saudi Arabia of cattle manure before," Lindloff said. "This building can hold about four days worth of fuel for us (that) correlates into 12 million pounds of manure."The manure will produce steam that will help distill corn into ethanol.But manure and ethanol are only part of the story. The plant will also produce tons of distiller's grain, which are leftovers from the fermenting process that are fed back to the cattle creating more manure and fuel for the plant.Lindloff doesn't think America can run on manure or even ethanol."I don't think ethanol is the silver bullet to answer all of our fossil fuel problems," he said.But he and Josserand said they do think the unique technology is in the right place at the right time."This has to be the future," Josserand said.
Video: Cow Manure Put To Use At Energy Plant 
