A southern Manitoba based team of researchers is hoping a low tech method of solid liquid manure separation can be commercially developed to help hog producers manage phosphorus.
A team of scientists working in partnership with the Niverville based Puratone Corporation has completed a study which evaluated the potential of using gravity to separate the solid and liquid factions of swine manure.
By using a 40 by eight by four foot gravity settling tank, scientists were able to reduce the volume of solids contained in the liquid fraction from about seven per cent to about two percent and reduce phosphorus levels from about eight pounds per thousand gallons to about two.
Professional agrologist Larry Slevinsky, who headed the project, says this approach offers a potential low cost solution to phosphorus management.
I think it’s an alternative way from the two cell component which is the majority of storages that hog farmers are utilizing now.
I think it’s a positive approach to dealing with the phosphorus issues.
What you have is a separation of the liquid manure into two manure streams, the liquid portion and the solid portion.
Therefore you would decrease the variability of the nutrients because you’re dealing with two specific streams.
The first stream, the liquid portion, would be low in phosphorus whereas the solid portion which had settled out would be high in phosphorus.,
The only thing is we have to look at alternative ways of dealing with the solid component.
That probably requires additional studies and marketing of that particular solid and other things that are associated with it.
Slevinsky says by dealing with two streams you reduce the variability of nutrients in each and end up with two sources of fertilizer.
He says the next step will be to apply the gravity setting approach to a continuous flow system.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
