They Pull Clean Water From Dairy Manure

They Pull Clean Water From Dairy Manure DAIRY EQUIPMENT & IDEAS A Wisconsin company says it has developed a process that pulls purified water from dairy manure while at the same time producing dry bedding material nutrient solids concentrated liquid nutrients and methane gas NuWay from Aqua Innovations greatly reduces dairy manure volume and releases the equivalent of distilled water “We were developing our technologies for at least a decade before it was applied to dairy farms ” says John Sorenson NuWay “We can work with digested or undigested manure sand bedding or manure solids ” Wisconsin’s Son-Bow Farms owned by Jay and Kristi Richardson first approached Aqua Innovations about dewatering manure waste The company saw potential for a new market and developed NuWay to apply their technologies to dairies “Jay tells visitors that in 15 mos of having the system it was only down for less than 48 hrs and that was a problem upstream and not with the system ” says Sorenson “A major feature is alleviating the application of manure Jay’s neighbors couldn’t believe how quickly he was done and his lagoon was empty ” Richardson credits the system for saving them more than $500 000 a year in labor and fuel costs on their 1 400-cow farm It also improves nutrient delivery to their fields The process can be used to store nutrient solids for use on the farm or for sale Sand bedding can be separated and returned to the barns Pathogen-free liquid nutrients can be stored for soil application or used to add phosphorus or nitrogen to silage crops for dairy rations The purified water that’s extracted is free of all pathogens and nutrients “The NuWay system is a large dairy farm solution The bigger the farm the better the fit ” says Sorenson “However it also works as a community model bringing the solution to multiple dairies ” Sorenson points to the company’s second installation near Springfield Wis which serves 3 dairies Situated on one of the dairies the dewatering system is integrated with a digester system Manure waste is trucked from the neighboring farms and combined with food waste before going into the digester Gas produced by the digester and used to generate electricity combined with tipping fees for the substrates helps to offset trucking fees “The Springfield system is set up so incoming trucks will drop the raw manure and pick up concentrate to return to their home farms ” explains Sorenson “Once the nutrient concentration system is fully operational it will be discharging purified water into a local creek ” He notes that it is impossible to give a price for an installation without seeing the site “Every farm is unique and every application custom ” he says “It’s not a product you can put in a crate and ship with an invoice ” Contact: FARM SHOW Followup AQUA Innovations 210 New Factory Rd Sharon Wis 53585 ph 262 736-4211; www aquainnovationsplus com

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