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Agriculture
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Animal Waste Management
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Animal Waste Management

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2015) | Viewed by 15647

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Shafiqur Rahman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA
Interests: animal waste and mortality management; anaerobic digestion; air quality; greenhouse gases; particulte matter emission

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Livestock and poultry production facilities produce a significant amount of manure and are an excellent source of major plant nutrients. Manure nutrient content and composition, however, depends on animal species and diets. In addition to supplying plant nutrients, manure can also improve soil health, organic matter, water holding capacity of the soil, and promotes the growth of beneficial soil organisms. However, anaerobic storage of manure is a source of pollutant gas emission, odor nuisance, as well as greenhouse gas (e.g., methane and nitrous oxide) emission. Similarly, improper land application of manure may cause environmental concerns. For example, runoff of nutrients from the feedlot and improper land application of manure is a significant cause of eutrophication. Similarly, surface vs. sub-surface land application of manure have some agronomic and environmental benefits and concerns. Researchers are exploring different management options and treatment technologies to mitigate environmental concerns resulting from livestock production facility, anaerobic storage, and land application of manure. In this Special Issue of “Animal Waste Management”, original research and review papers will be published.

Dr. Shafiqur Rahman
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Manure nutrient content
  • Anaerobic storage
  • Land application
  • Runoff
  • Odor
  • Pollutants
  • Greenhouse gas

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

744 KiB  
Article
Unlocking the Energy Potential of Manure—An Assessment of the Biogas Production Potential at the Farm Level in Germany
by Mattes Scheftelowitz and Daniela Thrän
Agriculture 2016, 6(2), 20; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agriculture6020020 - 26 Apr 2016
Cited by 36 | Viewed by 7845
Abstract
Residues from animal husbandry are one of the major greenhouse gas (GHG) emission sources in agriculture. The production of biogas from agricultural residues can reduce GHG emissions through an improved handling of the material streams such as manure storage. Additionally, biogas can substitute [...] Read more.
Residues from animal husbandry are one of the major greenhouse gas (GHG) emission sources in agriculture. The production of biogas from agricultural residues can reduce GHG emissions through an improved handling of the material streams such as manure storage. Additionally, biogas can substitute fossil energy carriers in the provision of heat, power, and transport fuels. The aim of this work is to estimate the manure potential for biogas production in Germany under the consideration of the farm size of livestock production. In Germany, cattle and pig farming is of major relevance with more than 130,000 farms throughout the country. To unlock the biogas potential of manure, the low energy density of manure, depending on the dry matter content, needs to be considered, meaning that biogas installations need to be built close to the manure production on the farm site. This not only results in a high number of biogas plants, but also due to the wide range of farm sizes in Germany, a huge number of very small biogas plants. Small biogas installations have higher specific investment costs. Together with the relatively low methane yields from manure, costs for power generation would be very high. Co-substrates with higher methane yield can lower the costs for biogas. Thus, the use of a co-substrate could help to use small manure potentials. Biogas plants with the necessary minimum size of 50 kWel installed power could be established at farms representing 12% of all cattle and 16.5% of all pigs respectively in Germany. Using excrement from pigs, farms representing 16.5% of the total amount of pigs could establish a biogas plant. The use of manure in combination with energy crops can increase the size of biogas plants on a farm site significantly. At cattle farms, the share would increase to 31.1% with 40% co-substrate and to 40.8% with 60% co-substrate. At pig farms, the share would increase to 36% if co-substrates were used. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Animal Waste Management)
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1187 KiB  
Article
Aerobic and Anaerobic Transformations in Estrogens and Nutrients in Swine Manure: Environmental Consequences
by Ashok K. Singh
Agriculture 2015, 5(3), 697-712; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agriculture5030697 - 26 Aug 2015
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 6849
Abstract
Pig manure is an excellent fertilizer and rich source of organic carbon and nitrogen compounds such organic nitrogen (O-N) (95% of total nitrogen) that is plant-unavailable-nitrogen (PUN) and mineralized nitrogen (about 1% of total nitrogen) such as ammonium (NH4+) and [...] Read more.
Pig manure is an excellent fertilizer and rich source of organic carbon and nitrogen compounds such organic nitrogen (O-N) (95% of total nitrogen) that is plant-unavailable-nitrogen (PUN) and mineralized nitrogen (about 1% of total nitrogen) such as ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3) that are plant-available-nitrogen (PAN). In addition, manure also contains two forms of estrogens: (i) poorly estrogenic thus essentially nontoxic conjugated estrogens (cEs) such as estrone (cE1), estradiol (cE2) and estriol (cE3); and (ii) highly estrogenic and toxic free estrogens (fEs) such as fE2, fE1 and fE3. This study showed that aerobic processing reduced concentrations of total carbon (TC), O-N, PAN and NH4+/NH3 ratio, transiently hydrolyzed cEs (cE2 > cE1 > cE3) into corresponding fEs, transiently increased estrogenic activity and potential toxicity, and rapidly degraded fEs (fE2, fE1 > fE3), thus reducing the estrogenic activity in manure. Unlike aerobic processing, anaerobic processing stabilized and increased PAN and NH4+/NH3 ratio, thus increasing the manure’s fertilizer value. However, anaerobic processing, relative to aerobic processing, poorly hydrolyzed cEs (reducing transient toxicity and increasing reserve toxicity potential) and poorly degraded fEs (increasing toxicity) in manure. Thus, aerobic and anaerobic environments have distinct effects on manures’ PAN and estrogenic activity, presenting an interesting dilemma: anaerobic incubation that increases manures’ PAN does not effectively degrade estrogens, while aerobic incubation that effectively degrades estrogens (after transiently increasing their estrogenic activity) also decreases PAN, thus making manure less profitable. New techniques are need to fully use manure as organic fertilizer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Animal Waste Management)
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