This item is one of the news releases and story leads that ARS Information
distributes on weekdays to fax and e-mail subscribers. You can also get the
latest ARS news on the World Wide Web at
www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/thelatest.htm.
* Feedback and questions to ARS News Service via e-mail: isjd@ars-grin.gov.
* ARS Information Staff, 5601 Sunnyside Ave., Room 1-2251, Beltsville MD
20705-5128, (301) 504- 1617, fax 504-1648.
----------
From: "ARS News Service"
To: "ARS News List"
Subject: State-of-the-Art Technology to Clean Up Wastewater
Date: Thu, Jul 19, 2001, 6:57 AM
STORY LEAD
State-of-the-Art Technology Chosen to Clean Up Wastewater from Swine
Production
___________________________________________
ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
July 19, 2001
Jennifer Arnold, (301) 504-1624, jaarnold@ars.usda.gov
___________________________________________
The attorney general of North Carolina and Smithfield Foods, Inc. have
selected technology adapted by Agricultural Research Service scientists in
Florence, S.C., to clean up and dispose of manure from swine-production
wastewater at a 4,360-pig farm in North Carolina's Duplin County.
The environmentally superior new technology will be used by Smithfield Foods
to replace current lagoons for cleaning up wastewater in the state's hog
operations, according to ARS soil scientists Matias B. Vanotti and Patrick
G. Hunt at the ARS Coastal Plain Soil, Water and Plant Research Center in
Florence.
Swine production in the United States is increasing rapidly. In North
Carolina alone, it grew from 2.6 million hogs in 1990 to more than 9 million
in 1997. The expansion has caused monumental waste-treatment problems that
are one of the region's greatest environmental issues.
These problems are related to flushing waste from high-density confinement
facilities into anaerobic lagoons and then applying the wastewater to
cropland. Besides nitrogen, swine manure contains phosphorus and other
chemicals that can fertilize plants. But land application can become
problematic when more manure nitrogen is applied than crops or forage can
use.
Vanotti, Hunt and a team of ARS colleagues devised an innovative way to
remove the ammonia form of nitrogen from swine manure quickly, effectively
and relatively inexpensively. They adapted a Japanese state-of-the-art
technology for treating municipal wastewater with large populations of
nitrifying bacteria entrapped in polymer gel pellets.
The full-scale treatment system to be built in Duplin County will separate
solids and liquids, make a soil-less growth medium from the solids, remove
the nitrogen and phosphorus from the wastewater, and recycle clean water for
the cleaning of the swine houses.
For more details, see the July issue of Agricultural Research online at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jul01/swine0701.htm
ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research
agency.
___________________________________________
