Farmers who produce livestock in areas dominated by urban sprawl and frequent rainfall may be interested in a new liquid manure composting system expected to be in operation early in 2006.
The $100,000 facility being built on a hog farm near Abbotsford, B.C., will have the capacity to convert about 500,000 gallons of liquid manure into an odourless, dry, nutrient-rich soil amendment that can be used by home gardeners and commercial farming operations.
“It is a technical challenge,” said John Paul, a former Agriculture Canada research scientist.
Read Also
VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award
Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.
Transform Compost Systems, the company he launched seven years ago, is familiar with designing more conventional composting systems, but this is its first system using liquid hog manure.
“We had to design a system that was environmentally sound, non-intrusive in a densely populated region and could function in an area that receives up to 48 inches (1,200 millimetres) of rainfall over a six-month period each year,” he said.
Design and construction of the farm-scale composting system follows a year of evaluating a smaller pilot system on a 300-sow farrow-to-finish Abbotsford farm. The producer on that farm had been spreading manure on nearby farmland, but had to find alternate means of managing manure when the land was no longer available.
The bio drying system intensifies and accelerates the conventional dry composting process. It eliminates much of the methane gas associated with manure storage and filters out ammonia that contributes to odour. It will make it easier to manage soil nutrient requirements, which reduces the risk of surplus nitrogen being leached from the soil or lost to the atmosphere as nitrous oxide.
The system involves mixing liquid hog manure and dry horse manure in a six by 75 metre watertight, concrete channel or pit.
The channel will be covered with a double-poly greenhouse shelter because of high autumn and winter rainfall.
The blended manure naturally begins to heat as part of the composting process. Specialized equipment turns the manure on a regular basis and the heat causes the liquid portion to evaporate, resulting in a dry, odourless, nutrient-rich solid material in a few weeks.
The dry material will be bagged and sold to local garden centres or used for high-value commercial crops as well as lawns and sports fields.
“We haven’t answered all the questions yet,” Paul said. “But we have a process that appears to provide another nutrient management option. It is clean and odourless, and perhaps most importantly, resolves the issue of trying to land-apply large manure volumes.”
The composting system provides another manure management option to hog, dairy and poultry producers.
However, it is particularly good news for producers who are dealing with urban pressures and the challenge of managing manure on a limited land base.
The project was initiated with the assistance of the Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Program for Canadian Agriculture, which is administered by the Soil Conservation Council of Canada.
For more information, visit the feature article on www.soilcc.ca.
