Farm-Scape, Episode 2113

Scientists at the Prairie Swine Centre will spend the next few months evaluating the effectiveness of separating the solid and liquid components of swine manure as a means of reducing both odor and gaseous emissions from swine barns.

A research project slated to begin at the Prairie Swine Centre in Saskatoon next week will evaluate a system developed in Quebec which uses a conveyer belt to separate manure into two streams.

Research scientist in engineering Dr. Bernardo Predicala says the system was originally developed to help farmers manage the land application of manure nutrients and comply with new environmental regulations.

"This project originally started in Quebec, the idea of this one, because there we have more issues on handling the nutrients in the manure, especially with phosphorus and that usually is isolated in the solid component of the manure.

The original idea was to separate the solid and liquid components of the manure and then handle them more effectively so they developed this concept of replacing the slatted portion of the pens with a conveyer belt which is tilted at an angle so that it can drain out the urine at one end and then take out the solid components on the other end.

Let's remember that swine manure is considered as a fertilizer so it's applied in the land.

Current regulations now, they are applying this at a rate that depends on the nitrogen content of the land but now there's an increasing issue about over applying in terms of phosphorus so now we'd like to apply them separately because phosphorus stays mainly with the solids while the nitrogen stays with the urine or the liquid so, if we can separate them, we can apply them as needed in the land."

Dr. Predicala says four trials will be conducted over four months and he expects results to be available in October.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.