Up-date
elentecBio’s filtration and electrocoagulation (EC) technology can concentrate and fractionate dairy cow slurry, generating irrigation grey water, a P-rich ‘cake’ for fertiliser use and C- and N-rich fractions for composting and carbon sequestration. Stakeholder engagement during a recently funded feasibility study (Farming Innovation Project (FIP) Phosphate circularity: from dairy cow slurry to grassland agronomy) indicated both the need and willingness of farmers to engage with new technology to solve a range of slurry management problems.
The ability to trial and optimise elentecBio’s electrocoagulation-based process in different settings will be crucial to successful implementation and thus we were happy to learn that several stakeholders who attended, or heard of, the April 2023 dissemination day at Harper Adams University (HAU) are interested in hosting elentecBio’s electrocoagulation equipment on their farms/sites.
Next steps
To scale-up elentecBio’s process, firstly at HAU and subsequently at early adopter sites, requires new funding. The results of our successful FIP project were enthusiastically received by Innovate UK and Defra and we are now applying for a Farming Futures grant. The project we are proposing is to test elentecBio’s technology over several months and at sufficiently high throughput to treat the slurry produced from herds of up to 400 dairy cows. Funding would also support work that addresses stakeholder concerns voiced during the dissemination day, for instance, storage requirements for the P-rich and P-poor fractions, and the transport, application, and valorisation of fractions. Treatment of
the remaining liquid to a purity level at which it could be discharged would greatly reduce slurry storage requirements and this will be a priority area of development.
Many of you attending the dissemination day were eager to discover the cost of the technology. In the absence of data regarding the lifespan of filtration and electrocoagulation units when used to treat slurry this is a difficult estimate to make, and one of the reasons it is so important that we trial the technology at scale over several months. In the first instance this will be carried out at HAU. Further work, requiring additional funding, would be to test and optimise the technology on different farms with herds maintained under a variety of conditions.
Your participation and support during the next stages of development would be greatly appreciated.
