Treating slurry to reduce emissions

Dominika Krol, Maxwell Owusu-Twum and George Gleasure Teagasc Johnstown Castle and Shaun Connolly, NUI Galway bring us details on their research into Acidification and Amendments for Slurry Treatment and the Impacts on Emissions. This was presented at the recent Farming for a Better Future Open Day

In this video Maxwell Owusu-Twum, Post doc Researcher at Teagasc Johnstown Castle, discusses his research into treating slurry to reduce emissions.

Summary

• Slurry storage and land spreading are both important sources of ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions (methane and nitrous oxide) into the atmosphere. Storage of manures produce 10.6% of agricultural GHG emissions, with a further 4% associated with land spreading. Simultaneously, these activities are also responsible for 79% of ammonia.

• Slurry amendments, sometimes also called additives, can mitigate these emissions by affecting manure characteristics. Most commonly known amendments are acidifiers that use chemical mode of action (e.g., acids reducing slurry pH). Other, less studied modes of action, are biological (e.g., microbial additives modifying microbial processes) or physical (e.g., biochar adsorbing nitrogen onto its surface).

• Research to date shows very good reduction of ammonia and GHG emissions from acidifiers and lesser reductions from biochar.

• There is large variability in how effective various additives are relative to mitigating emissions during slurry storage and land spreading.

• Slurry acidification uses hazardous materials and needs careful consideration and specialist installation in order to adhere to health and safety standards.

Other resources & online information

Email: dominika.krol@teagasc.ie 

See Johnstown Castle Open Day - Technologies for farms of the future 

Check out the hashtag #GrassSoilsTechnology