Raw Manure Treatment

Client

Dairy Farm

Year

2019

Impact & Benefits

We recovered about 75% of the lagoon effluent as UF permeate at an average flux rate of ~18 GFD.

Case Study: Ultrafiltration, Dairy, Raw Manure

A large dairy operation that produces approximately 100,000 GPD of liquid manure is currently stored in lagoons and then hauled and spread onto fields. The farm approached us to provide a sustainable solution to reclaim clean water for on-farm use or discharge. DO would process the liquid manure using ultrafiltration, producing about 15,000 GPD of concentrated slurry rich in phosphorus (the “UF Concentrate”) and 85,000 GPD of transparent liquid (the “UF permeate”).

Company Issue / Challenge

Current volume of manure require a large storage pit. Managing the storage and hauling of manure is a constant challenge and requires coordination of various trucks throughout the year.

The cost for land application is high and runoff has few nutrients, so paying to truck this material to farm fields is not efficient.

Managing the storage and hauling of leachate is a constant challenge and requires coordination of various trucks throughout the year.

Concentrating the nutrients in the leachate for storage and later land application with manure would be most efficient.

What We Delivered

System Update

For this project, we used a tubular membrane with an average pore size of 0.02 μm We recovered about 75% of the lagoon effluent as UF permeate at an average flux rate of ~18 GFD.

Impact & Benefits

Our leachate filtration system is designed to recover more than 90% of the liquid as clean water for direct discharge.

Lagoon Effluent Recovery

We recovered about 75% of the lagoon effluent as UF permeate at an average flux rate of ~18 GFD.

Analysis of Ultrafiltration Process Streams

PARAMETER	Unit	UF Feed	UF Permeate	UF Concentrate	Percent Removed by UF
Total solids	mg/L	26,362	8,400	76,929	68%
Total volatile solids (TVS)	mg/L	17,425	3,800	53,696	78%
Ammoniacal Nitrogen	mg/L	910	821	1,414	10%
Organic nitrogen	mg/L	3,043	87	5,871	97%
Total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN)	mg/L	3,954	908	7,285	77%
Phosphorus (total)	mg/L	500	24	1,400	95%
Potassium (total)	mg/L	1,500	1,410	1,500	6%
Sulfur (total)	mg/L	203	34	611	83%
Calcium (total)	mg/L	1,114	306	2,840	73%
Magnesium (total)	mg/L	611	278	1,318	55%
Sodium (total)	mg/L	611	574	611	6%
Iron (total)	mg/L	107	0.14	336	100%
Manganese (total)	mg/L	11	0.659	35	94%
Zinc (total)	mg/L	8	0.01	26	100%
Copper (total)	mg/L	30	n.d.	97	>99%
pH	S.U.	8.4	7.69	8.3	N/A