Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1278

Researchers at the University of Manitoba expect to complete the construction of an enclosed commercial scale biofilter on a swine farm near Niverville by the end of this month.

The biofilter was developed at the University of Manitoba's Glenlea research farm in partnership with the Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative.

It's designed to reduce the emission of odor causing gases and compounds from swine barns. Dr. Danny Mann says this particular system is enclosed and is being filled with a mixture of wood chips and mature compost.

"The biofilter works because there is a natural population of microorganisms that live on the surfaces of the moist particles in the biofilter media.

You've got these wood chip particles and the compost particles and, if you keep them moist, then you are able to have a thriving population of microorganisms.

When you duct the air from the barn through the biofilter the odorous molecules get absorbed onto these moist surfaces of the wood chips and then the microorganisms use the odorous molecules as a food source and they break them down in a natural process of respiration or of digestion.

The reason it is an advantage is that it is treating the odor.

It's removing those odor causing molecules from the air stream so the air that is ultimately leaving the biofilter has been purified in a sense. The odor has been removed."

Dr. Mann says evaluations conducted on the demonstration biofilter at Glenlea showed an 80 percent reduction of hydrogen sulfide, one of the major odor causing gases. He says that would suggest similar reductions in other odor causing compounds.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.