United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Robert S. Kerr Environmental
Research Laboratory
Ada OK 74820
Research and Development
EPA-600/S2-83-080 Jan. 1984
&EPA Project Summary
Combined Treatment of Liquid
Wastes from Industrial
Swine Farms Using BLWRS
Jerzy Rybinski, Aleksandra Zelechowska, Zbigniew Makowski, Romuald
Ceglarski, and Elzbieta Heybowicz
The efficiency of a Barriered Landscape
Water Renovation System (BLWRS),
1500 m2 in size, to renovate flushed
slurry from the industrial pig farm was
studied during two years of operation.
Applying annual loading rates of 1000
mm of slurry pretreated mechanically
and coagulated using aluminum sulphate,
resulted in the following daily loading
rates expressed as kg/m2: COD, 0.0178-
0.0604; TN, 0.0037-0.0079; TKN,
0.0034-0.0070; and TP, 0.0005-
0.0034; and the following removed
percentages: COD, 90.4-98.8%; TN,
64.2-89.4%; TKN, 74.9-96.4%; and
TP, 96.6-99.8%.
A water budget for BLWRS was
prepared, transformations of volatile
solids, COD, TN, TKN, organic nitrogen,
oxidized nitrogen forms, and TP occurr-
ing in the bed at the different BLWRS
depths were described. An oxygen
balance for the BLWRS was developed,
the effect of metals removal was
described, and the influence of temper-
ature on the processes as well as its
influence on the possibility of full-time
operation was defined. The results
obtained were compared with similar,
smaller scale investigations conducted
in 1974 by Erickson. The work described
in this report was performed under the
auspices of the Maria Curie-Sklodowska
Fund and in cooperation with the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
This Project Summary was developed
by EPA's Robert S. Kerr Environmental
Research Laboratory. Ada. OK, to
announce key findings of the research
project that is fully documented in a
separate report of the same title (see
Project Report ordering information at
back).*
Introduction
The Barriered Landscape Water Renova-
tion System (BLWRS) is a modified soil
filter with impermeable barrier which
eliminates many of the organic substances
and other nutrients from the waste slurry.
The degree of removal suggests the
possibility of BLWRS utilization for
renovation and recycling of wastewater
for reuse on the farm. Moreover, the
BLWRS might be utilized where pretreat-
ment, or even complete treatment and
discharge is necessary because of the
lack of available land for agricultural
utilization of animal wastes.
The aim of this work is to demonstrate
the operation of BLWRS at a technical
scale in combination with a conventional
treatment system during the two-year
period of investigations, using slurry from
an industrial pig farm. The system
combination consists of removing sus-
pended solids from the slurry by filtering
on the screens and sedimentation as well
as by coagulation before applying it to the
BLWRS. These preliminary treatment
processes were necessary to decrease
the mechanical clogging of the BLWRS
surface.
•Although the research described in this article has
been funded wholly or in part by the United States
Environmental Protection Agency through Grant No
JB-5-534-6 to the Institute of Meteorology and Water
Management, Maritime Branch, Department of
Water Protection, Gdansk, Poland, it has not been
subjected to the Agency's required peer and policy
review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the
views of the Agency, and no official endorsement
should be inferred
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The first industrial pig farm in Poland
was built in 1972. Since then, the
number of these has increased to 145,
their scale and production are presented
in Table 1 The farm utilized for this
project is located near Gdansk at a small
village called Czernin.
The management of the slurry from the
industrial pig farms is based on one of
four basic principles: 1) direct slurry
transportation to the fields; 2) direct
watering of the fields with the liquid
phase of the slurry and periodic solids
removal; 3) lagoomng of the slurry before
agricultural utilization; or 4) purification
of the slurry in the treatment plant and
discharge of the effluent to the surface
water. The last method is used on about
10 percent of the farms in Poland
because they have no available land for
agricultural utilization of the slurry.
Slurry from the industrial farms differs
mainly in quantity and concentration;
however, quality differences do occur,
caused by diet and the method of feeding.
Water consumption in industrial farms
range from 5 to 40 liters per day per pig,
depending on the farm type and method
of building cleaning and slurry removal.
The high concentration of the slurry
and the location of the farms, generally
on lands situated far from the larger
water ways, necessitate a high degree of
waste purification to reach an effluent
quality suitable for the discharge of
purified wastes to surface waters.
Environmental regulations divide Polish
surface waters, depending upon their
utilization, into three classes: Class I -
waters reserved for the supply of drinking
water; Class II - waters designated for the
animal husbandry and recreation; and
Class III - waters designated for industry
and agriculture.
Each river class is assigned a definite
permissible pollution level at the average
low water level, after the purified wastes
are discharged Exceeding this level is
punishable by fines. Therefore, the larger
the amount of slurry, the smaller the
receiver a nd the higher the class of water,
the higher the degree of purification that
is necessary
Present methods of slurry purification
based on filtration, sedimentation, coagu-
lation, biological cleaning in the tanks
with activated sludge or in the lagoons do
not always give satisfactory results.
Using the soil environment with the
treatment process modification for nitro-
gen and phosphorus removal, as the final
stage of animal waste purification is the
most promising method.
Conclusions
During the two-year period of BLWRS
operation, low temperatures in December,
caused icing of BLWRS surface and made
operation of the system practically
impossible. Restarting the BLWRS again
was possible only after a four-month
break, reducing the operation of the
system to eight months, i.e., from April to
November.
Besides shutdowns caused by the low
temperatures, delays in operation were
caused by over-loading of BLWRS surface,
reducing the period of BLWRS feeding to
about 200 days during the year. The annual
dose of the wastes applied to the adapted
BLWRS, at a loading slightly in excesses
of 1000 mm, which amounted to. about
4.0 mm/day in the eight-month period of
favorable temperatures and to about 5.0
mm/day on the average during the 200
days of effective waste feeding of the
"worked in " BLWRS. On the basis of this
study it was concluded that using an
energy insert for the denitrification
process in the form of the sludges
separated from slurry on the screens and
composted, doesn't give the expected
results, but on the contrary, constitutes a
source of additional pollution.
The transformations of impurities in
BLWRS vertical profile for different forms
of Nitrogen (N), Chemical Oxygen Demand
(COD), Total Phosphorus (TP), and Sus-
pended Solids (SS), analyses based on
the sets of average values from the whole
operating period can be expressed by the
equation:
where: C0 and Cm, initial concentration
Table 1. Industrial Pig Farms in Poland (Kransnodebski 1978)
Production Scale
Thousands of
Animals
Number
of Farms
Units
Annual Production
of Porkers of 110 kg
Weight
6 - 10
11-20
21 - 30
31 45
47
73
9
16
Total
145
322,000
1,083.000
252,000
616.000
2,273,000
and concentration of measured parameter
at depth "m" (cm), and a and b are
equation parameters. COD of slurry at the
different BLWRS depths indicates correla-
tion with Organic Carbon (C org) with the
slope coefficient equal 3.0987.
The removal of phosphorus from the
wastes can be expressed by either
Langmuir or Freundlich isotherms but in
the second case the correlation is slightly
higher. Differences were not observed in
the effects of phosphorus removal from
BLWRS purifying the wastes after coagu-
lation with aluminum sulphate and from
the BLWRS with the layer of blast-
furnace slag fed with slurry without
coagulation. The comparison of the
effects of slurry purification on the
adapted BLWRS in the period of favorable
temperatures (average value +12.7°C)
with the month of the average temperature
(equal +3.9°C) indicates a decrease of the
purification effect mainly in the range of
total nitrogen (TN).
The investigation of ions of metals in
the slurry passing through BLWRS shows
the fixation of considerable amounts of K,
Na, Zn, Cu, Fe, Al, and Cd in the bed while
the degree of their removal decreases
with the increase of the time of BLWRS
operation. However, the elution of Ca
and Mg ions from the BLWRS bed was
observed most clearly during the second
year of operation. The layer of blast-
furnace slag additionally increases the
amount of leached Mg.
The influence of an energy insert on the
increased leaching of iron compounds
and to some degree potassium (K), from
the BLWRS bed, was also observed. The
low Cd concentration in the applied
wastes indicates that in Polish conditions
this metal is not a problem.
Loading the BLWRS with wastes
increases in the concentration of most of
the investigated parameters, most notice-
ably in the upper 30 cm of the soil profile.
The accumulation of nutrients is most
evident in the case of C org. Volatile
Suspended Solids (VSS), and Total
Kjeldahl Nitrogen (TKN). No significant
differences were noted in the accumulation
of substances in the BLWRS bed at the
end of 1979 and 1980, which reflects the
development of some state of equilibrium.
Comparing the total effects of purification
in the range of basic indicators with the
results of Erickson's (1974) investigations,
in the case of comparable section without
energy insert, the compatibility of the
results were obtained with a slightly
worse TKN elimination and lower BLWRS
loadings in the second year of the study.
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Recommendations
Investigations should be made on the
application of the BLWRS to wastes other
than animal wastes On animal farms,
more study is needed in the final degree
of water purification and renovation after
the biological stabilization of wastes The
system's sensitivity to the influence of
the low temperature and the limitations
in the use of BLWRS during winter
months m the climates with temperatures
below 0°C requires further study. The
authors recommend testing the BLWRS
during winter temperature conditions
using feeding systems other than sprinkling.
BLWRS Description
The experimental BLWRS is located
near an existing industrial pig farm waste
treatment plant. The BLWRS method of
waste purification was tested on a 1500
m2 area divided into two filter beds, fed
with wastes independently. Both beds
were formed from sand of a granulation
shown in Figure 1 and having the
chemical characteristics listed in Table 2.
The filtration coefficient of the applied
sand was in the range of 2.57 - 4.63 x 10"2
cm/sec. Both beds were constructed m
an artificially formed earth basin, which
was sealed with a waterproof barrier
made of a double layer of polyethylene foil
with control drainage pipes laid between
foil sheets.
Each of the two BLWRS was further
divided into two sections. One section of
Table 2. Chemical and Physical Characteristics of the Original BLWRS Soil (Concentrations in
ppm)
Total Organic Solids
Organic Carbon
Inorganic Carbon
TKN
Total Phosphorus
Potassium
Sodium
Calcium
Magnesium
Copper
Zinc
Iron
Aluminum
Bulk Density
Porosity; solid 62 5%;
43,700.0
10,750.0
7.300.0
55.0
270.0
890.0
18.8
22,235.0
1,750.0
4.75
15.0
2,587.5
975.0
1.55 g/cm3
porespace = 37.5%
each BLWRS was equipped with a
wooden channel to which an additional
energy source for denitrification was
introduced. The other section had no
energy insert. Sludge separated from the
animal wastes during filtration on the
dynamic screens and then stored for one
year on the field, was used as the
additional energy source in these investiga-
tions. The elementary composition of that
sludge, for the basic constituents, was as
follows: C-43.13%, H-5.85%, and N-
1.87%.
Sand above the foil was 1.8m thick, the
BLWRS beds were divided into two
horizontal zones: an aerobic zone of 1.2
m and the underlying saturated aerobic
zone of 0.6 m which was created by
•S <=
t;
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Jerzy Rybinski. Aleksandra Zelechowska, Zbigniew Makowski. Romuald Ceglarski.
and Elzbieta Heybowicz are with the Institute of Meteorology and Water Manage-
ment, Maritime Branch, Department of Water Protection, 80-252 Gdansk Poland.
Lynn R. Shuyler is the EPA Project Officer (see below).
The complete report, entitled "Combined Treatment of Liquid Wastes from Industrial
Swine Farms Using BL WPS." (Order No. PB 83-258-707; Cost: $19.00, subject to
change) will be available only from:
National Technical Information Service
5285 Port Royal Road
Springfield, VA22161
Telephone: 703-487-4650
The EPA Project Officer can be contacted at:
Robert S. Kerr Environmental Research Laboratory
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
P.O.Box 1198
Ada. OK 74820
•irliS GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1984-759-015/7282
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Center for Environmental Research
Information
Cincinnati OH 45268
Official Business
Penalty for Private Use $300
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