Catching up on "Manure processing activities in Europe"

Agro Business Park has in cooperation with GIRO Centre Tecnològic finalised a DG ENV financed study on “Manure processing activities in Europe”. The study has established an inventory of manure processing, described the state of the art of processing technologies, classified end and by-products and their feasibility for marketing, assessed the economic and environmental feasibility of different technologies via seven case studies, and considered future trends for manure processing.

The reports contain some unique information and conclusions about manure processing, for instance:

• An inventory of manure processing activities, which determines, that manure processing currently has reached an average level of 7.8% of the livestock manure production, with a big variation from country to country.
• 45 unitary processes have been identified and explained. Some of these processes can be found working alone if these are enough for solving the problem that motivated its adoption. Others must be combined for fitting a given objective. Usual combinations have been identified at every unitary process description section and a synthesis of these main combinations is presented. Anaerobic digestion is found to be a key process in strategies dealing with nutrients recovery.
• There are presently especially three types of manure processing products being marketed at considerable volume, and a few more could gain importance if the interest in manure processing continues to grow. However, the market is suffering under lack of infrastructure, discredited qualities of the products, and lack of transparent and acknowledged regulation.
• There is a huge variation in economic and environmental performance of livestock manure processing plants, and that the individual farmer or the individual plant chooses the most feasible and cheap technology configuration for processing of livestock manure, depending on the surplus of nitrogen in the area, combined with regional framework conditions and other matters of importance for decision making.
• Locally based biogas production (anaerobic digestion of livestock manure) is a focal technology in the future because it aims at better recycling nutrients while at the same time it has other benefits, such as production of renewable energy. Product standards should be introduced as a way to support the development of the market infrastructure for end and by-products. A number of knowledge gaps require that additional research is carried out.

All five technical reports are now available for download from http://agro-technology-atlas.eu/knowledge.aspx