Webinar title: Past and Present – Challenges and Perspectives for Sustainable Treatment Technologies for Dairy and Swine Manure in the US
Speaker: Jun Zhu
Webinar time: October 11, 2024 (Friday) 14:00
Venue: Room 200, New Environmental Building
Inviter: Nanwen Zhu, Haiping Yuan
Abstract:
Dairy and swine industries are the two major agricultural operations in the US, which continuously provide adequate animal meat and dairy products to consumers in both the US and the world. However, the production wastes, i.e., dairy and swine manure, have long been considered a primary source of pollutants for air and water, and the efforts to develop technologies to minimize water pollution resulting from land application of dairy and swine manure have continued to be front and center in not only the industries but also the research community. In this presentation, traditional animal manure management systems employed in most dairy and swine farms in the US will be reviewed with pros and cons of these systems summarized. Comparisons in terms of manure storage and treatment techniques used between swine and dairy farms will be discussed. Traditional anaerobic digestion coupled with biogas and electricity production on dairy farms will be reviewed, and the barriers to adopting anaerobic digestion on animal farms will be commented. In addition, the current manure nutrients removal and recovery methods with their economic feasibility for practical adoption will be presented. Advanced manure nutrients recovery methods such as struvite production using electrolytic reactions will also be introduced. Finally, the challenges and perspectives in developing new technologies for animal manure management and treatment will be illustrated.
About the speaker:
Professor Zhu Jun enrolled in the Department of Civil Engineering, Zhejiang University in 1978 and received his PhD degree from the Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA in 1995. He has been a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Minnesota since 2009. In November 2013, he joined the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of Arkansas, and served as the director of the Agricultural Technology Research and Extension Station of the university. The research field mainly focuses on the development and application of various physical, chemical and biological technologies to treat livestock and poultry breeding waste, crop sticks and agricultural and animal husbandry product processing waste, research and development of renewable energy (such as hydrogen, biogas) and new biomass product technology, and the establishment of efficient and high-value environmentally friendly agricultural circular economy. This visit mainly focuses on the treatment and disposal of organic solid waste municipal solid waste leachate and the microbial removal effect of antibiotics and other new pollutants in the process.