Columbia, Ohio-Ohio State University and the University of Minnesota have received a $600,000 grant from USDA to study the feasibility of capturing and recycling ammonia emissions from manure to be used as farm fertilizer. Project leader Lingying Zhao, an OSU extension specialist, said the joint project is intended to produce at least a partial answer to soaring nitrogen fertilizer prices and environmental and health concerns caused by millions of tons of ammonia being emitted every year from animal feeding operations. He said the objective is to develop a wet scrubber for trapping ammonia emissions from typical manure storage such as deep pits, manure composting facilities, or covered manure storage facilities. It will evaluate the performance and costs of the scrubbers on commercial farmers to assess the economic feasibility of the system, explore methods of converting captured ammonia into nitrogen fertilizer, and educate producers about the technology. Researchers have developed a prototype scrubber in the lab that collects 70 to 90 percent of ammonia emissions, and expect to test it on the farm. “If a composting facility generates about 100 tons of ammonia annually, and the scrubber is only 70 percent efficient, 70 tons of ammonia can be collected and recycled for use on the farm,” Zhan said. The three-year grant is part of USDA’s competitive air-quality grants program, in which $5 million has been awarded to 11 universities to conduct air quality projects.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain