Building Food Chain Resilience and Sustainability
PROBLEM
The dairy industry faces the problem of managing huge volumes of slurry. Although rich in nutrients essential for plant growth, the ratios of these nutrients are often not optimal.
If crops do not uptake all of the nutrients, this poses the problem of nutrients leaching into water courses leading to eutrophication, increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and non-compliance with water and nitrate regulations.
For farms with insufficient land to spread slurry, transporting excess slurry with a high-water content off-farm is expensive.
SOLUTION
elentecBioAg’s technology offers a solution to these issues. Our technology involves electrocoagulation and filtration procedures that concentrate and fractionate slurries generating a carbon-rich solids fraction, a phosphorous-rich sludge, and a high nitrogen, phosphorous-reduced liquid fraction, leaving only water.
During a recent feasibility project this technology was retrofitted to the slurry handling facility of a 400-cow commercial dairy herd to consistently remove 95-98% of the phosphorous from slurry. The recovered phosphorous is stable and highly bioavailable for crop uptake.
TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
During the next two years, optimisation and improvements to the slurry treatment technology will be made to increase its resilience and reliability to ensure operation at the scale of medium-sized dairy farms in England. Extended processing of slurry will allow the costs of this promising technology to be captured.
This slurry treatment will generate fertiliser products for precision on-farm use and/or resale, increase vital revenue generation, reduce slurry storage and spreading costs, GHG emissions, nutrient leaching and soil compaction. Alongside water reuse/recovery, it will also enable cost-effective nutrient valorisation and transport throughout the UK, reducing reliance on artificial fertilisers.
Throughout development we are keen to engage with farm and policy-based stakeholders. Read the latest news updates to find out how the work is progressing and how you can get involved.
