This article features Dr. Erik Anderson, senior project manager and national anaerobic digestion expert at SCS Engineers, and his leadership in advancing hybrid lagoon anaerobic digestion systems for livestock farms. Anderson explains that covered lagoons are increasingly common in U.S. agriculture because they help farmers manage waste, reduce emissions, generate biogas, and create new revenue opportunities.
The article presents Anderson’s hybrid design approach to improve the performance of passive lagoon digesters, which often achieve only about 60% of a material’s biogas potential. His strategy focuses on five key improvements: feedback and control loops, insulation and heating, mixing, optimized organic loading rates, and sustainable energy use. Together, these elements help stabilize digester conditions, increase biogas production, improve system efficiency, and make better use of existing farm infrastructure.
Anderson emphasizes that real-time monitoring, heat retention, preheating, proper mixing, and careful loading can help farms close the performance gap without overbuilding. The article positions his approach as a practical, cost-conscious path for farms to reduce costs, improve sustainability, and maximize the value of waste streams.
Farms can implement the hybrid lagoon improvements by treating the digester less like a passive storage pond and more like a managed biological system. In short, implementation starts with measuring what is happening in the lagoon, then using that data to guide targeted upgrades in heating, mixing, feed management, and energy recovery.
Originally published in Biomass Magazine, please feel free to read and share the article using the icons below.
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