Anaerobic Digestion of Animal Wastes
Stimulating Animal Waste Anaerobic Digesters with PHS

Summary

Anaerobic digestion offers an affordable solution to managing livestock waste and provides a significant environmental benefit. Animal wastes on farms commonly accumulate in open air storage and causing air, soil and water pollution. In times of particularly severe weather conditions, open air storage systems have created dangerous and harmful pollution problems.

Livestock operations in Europe have been managing livestock waste since the 1970s with anaerobic digestion and in the 1990s the United States Department of Agriculture began to promote the technology to the American farmer. Anaerobic digestion of animal waste had been considered uneconomical; rising energy prices, broader regulatory requirements along with the increasing environmental regulations have made anaerobic digestion a viable economic choice in
livestock farming. The technology is well-proven in the domestic sewage field and has been applied to enough animal waste to demonstrate performance there.

Anaerobic digestion of animal waste converts some of the organic matter to digester gas containing 65-70% methane, which can be burned to produce heat or generate electricity. Solids for disposal are reduce, less offensive in odor and in many case recycled and sold as compost.

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