KEMPTVILLE—A space age solution now exists to deal with the mountains of manure created by intensive agriculture.

It was first developed as a means to deal with the large amounts of water needed to wash the huge NASA parachutes used to recover the space shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. The water-recycling system worked so well, it was carried over into other sectors that use large amounts of water, namely, intensive agriculture.

A major setback of intensive agriculture is dealing with the constant flow of manure and waste water—if you have 10,000 hogs, the nutrients are going to flow, and they’re going to flow fast, so you better have somewhere to put it.

Farm-based water purification plants were developed by Agrimond, a division of AJT and Associates, which is a US company based in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It developed a system, which, for the first time, is being sold locally by Ottawa Valley Harvestore Systems in Kemptville.

"We are promoting it as of this year," said OVH operations manager Henk Huizenga. "It’s not something we’re going to be selling tomorrow, but for certain projects I think it’s going to be the real thing—especially for farmers who don’t have enough land base to spread the manure."

The Agrimond system is a self-contained, zero-discharge, water purification system which purifies waste water from the barn and constantly recycles it for deluge, misting, and drinking. Besides recycling the water, it creates a biosolid fertilizer, substantially less in volume than liquid manure.

The first system was built in 1998 at Murphy’s Vestal Farm in Kenansville, North Carolina. The system is capable of purifying the 140,000 to 180,000 litres of waste water a day the 10,000 hog finishing farm uses. A similar system, involving a dairy farm, is currently under construction in Pennsylvania.

"It’s a total recycling system, it’s quite unique," said Huizenga, explaining the biggest advantages are that it reduces the land base required to spread liquid manure, as well as farm odours.

"The cost is considerable," Huizenga plainly states, adding that the cost to build will eventually be recovered. "It’s not a cheap system ... because you have a recycling plant where you can recycle (water) to the point where you can drink it as clear water."

He adds this system could be modified to be used by three or four small neighbouring farms instead of just the large intensive operations the system was designed for.

In the first step of the four-stage process, waste water from cleaning and flushing out the barns passes through a mechanical screen and enters a large basin. The solids separated by the screen are used as fertilizer, and the water is recycled.

Step two takes place in the basin, where aerobic treatment of the water occurs. Here, air pumps constantly churn the raw waste water, to which oxygen and special bacteria is added. In this step, fecal matter and urine are digested by the bacteria, and ammonia and proteins from the waste are converted to nitrogen and carbon dioxide gas.

The treatment basin in the aerobic system not only requires one fifth of the space of traditional treatment lagoons, but the process is also much faster. The aerobic treatment takes one week instead of 180 days.

Some of this water is then pumped back to the barn to flush more waste. Since the water contains non-pathogenic (non-disease causing) bacteria, the waste material begins to break down instantly, right underneath the barns, reducing the odour and stress on the animals.

The rest of the water leaving the basin is then put through the third step, which involves chemical and mechanical treatment of the waste water. It is passed though a series of above-ground storage tanks, where suspended solids are separated from the basin water. Nitrogen compounds are removed, leaving the water clear, but lightly colored. The solids that are removed in step three contain phosphates and can be added to the solids from step one, making a more valuable fertilizer.

The fourth step involves filtration with ozone, a chemical compound composed of three oxygen molecules (breathable oxygen is two oxygen molecules), which destroys bacteria, viruses and all other infectious microbes. This step, the final stage in purification, makes the water clean enough for drinking, misting, and washing the animals.

"Dairy farmers can use a lot less land base and still milk a lot more cows. They don’t need the land base to put the manure down. That’s the biggest thing, I think," said Huizenga. "And there’s no odour, especially with the hog farms. A lot of people don’t want a hog producing farm in their township, so now they can do it without having any problems."