A Cornell group of agricultural and biological engineers received a Superior Paper Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ASABE) in July for their paper's "exceptional merit" in contributing to the agricultural engineering literature.

The paper, "Heat Transfer Model for Plug-Flow Anaerobic Digesters," which was published in the Transactions of the ASABE (48:2), was authored by Professor Kifle Gebremedhin; Binxin Wu, former research associate; Curt Gooch, senior extension associate; Peter Wright, former senior extension associate; and Scott Inglis, research support specialist. They are all in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Anaerobic digesters are reactors that use animal manure and food waste to produce methane, which can be used for heating water and producing electricity. The paper predicts energy requirements for digester operation in order to maximize methane production.