Under the Federal Government's proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS), the larger Australian meat processing plants will have an obligation to purchase permits equivalent to their carbon dioxide equivalent (CO-e) emissions. Depending on the price of these permits, processors will face additional annual charges of upwards of $250,000. These costs could be reduced by capturing the biogas from anaerobic ponds and utilising it as a fuel. Overall energy costs can be reduced by fully utilising waste heat sources around the processing plant.

Absorption refrigeration has lower operating costs than the traditional vapour-compression systems as it is able to utilise waste heat or can be direct fired. An absorption system could operate on the waste heat from a rendering plant or the exhaust heat from a cogeneration plant running on methane from biogas. Therefore the objectives of this project were to assess the economics of absorption refrigeration using waste heat from:
a. dry rendering;
b. a cogeneration plant running on biogas from anaerobic ponds,
for larger beef plants that fall under the CPRS and medium-sized plants.