The manure will come free of charge, courtesy of local feedlot operators for whom waste disposal is a difficult and costly necessity.
The Hereford plant will begin operating in the second half of 2007.
Panda has plans to build similar facilities in Haskell County, Kansas, and Yuma, Colorado.
In Mead, Nebraska, a small town of about 600 people 30 miles west of Omaha (Nebraska map), E3 Biofuels is taking the idea of cow power a step further.
Their new facility, set to begin operation in October, will integrate cattle and ethanol production in a highly efficient "closed loop" system.
The E3 operation is smaller than the Panda facilities. Built around an existing feedlot, 30,000 head of cattle will provide the energy needed to produce 24 million gallons (91 million liters) of ethanol a year.
Cattle will be kept in long, covered enclosures with slotted floors, and manure falling through will be pumped directly into the processing facility.
E3 CEO Dennis Langley says collecting the manure immediately eliminates the common problem of water pollution caused by manure left standing in feedlots or spread across farmland.
The process also prevents the atmospheric release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from manure left to slowly decompose.
While Panda relies on an incineration process, E3's manure will be broken down inside an oxygen-free "digester," yielding methane fuel and an ammonia by-product that can be sold as fertilizer.
The energy generated will be used to convert locally grown corn into ethanol and wet distillers' grain, a protein-rich by-product that is fed back to the cattle on site.
Langley says the three-part combination of feedlot, methane generator, and fuel processor will allow the company to make ethanol at less cost and with far better energy return than traditional methods.
"The normal process is, you put one BTU [a unit of energy] in and get two BTU out," Langley said.
"What we do is radical. We put one BTU in and get 46.7 BTU out."
What that means, he continues, is that "producing 1 gallon [3.8 liters] of our ethanol is like producing 23 gallons [87 liters] of traditional ethanol or 15 gallons [57 liters] of gasoline."
Fueling Controversy
With gas prices high and the future of world oil production uncertain, interest in alternative fuels is surging.
But ethanol, a fuel now widely used in Brazil, has been the subject of an often polarized debate in the U.S.
The controversy has been playing out recently both in science journals and on energy blog sites such as The Oil Drum.
Proponents like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla argue that ethanol can replace gasoline, while opponents counter that not enough agricultural land exists to meet more than a fraction of the country's energy needs.
Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel is an ethanol skeptic and co-author of a study finding that corn ethanol typically costs more energy to produce than it provides.
Pimentel says manure-fueled production does represent an improvement over traditional methods.
"It probably would make [the net energy balance] slightly positive," Pimentel said, though he remains skeptical about the efficiency claims of E3 Biofuels.
"If you omit some of the inputs, you can make it look good. I'd like to see all the data," he added.
But another outspoken ethanol critic, oil industry analyst and blogger Robert Rapier, has endorsed the E3 Biofuels approach, calling it "responsible ethanol."
The 2005 energy bill approved last summer by U.S. President George W. Bush included a controversial mandate for increased ethanol production, and many new facilities are now being built.
Once the Mead facility is up and running, E3's Langley hopes to see small-scale, integrated cattle-ethanol operations spread across the rural Midwest, bringing both environmental and economic benefits.
"We want to build three to five new plants in 2007 and every year thereafter," Langley said.
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