Solid – Liquid separation of dairy manure: Distribution of components and methane production

Abstract Chemical treatment and screening can be an effective technique for separation of dairy cattle manure into a liquid fraction (LF) and a nutrient-rich solid fraction (SF). The optimum loading of a strong cationic polyacrylamide was found to be 43.9 g kg −1 of dry excreta. The separated SF contained 29.1% of the initial mass present in the manure and the chemicals added. The Volatile Solids (VS)/Total Solids (TS) ratio, which was 0.78 for the manure, rose to 0.82 for the SF and decreased to 0.63 in the LF. Furthermore, the SF retained 76.1, 79.9, 59.4 and 87.4% of TS, VS, Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen and Total Phosphorus, respectively. In the LF, the ratio of filtrate chemical oxygen demand (COD filtrate ) and COD due to volatile fatty acids (COD VFA ) in relation to total COD (COD T ) were 0.86 and 0.76, respectively. The percentage of anaerobically biodegradable chemical oxygen demand (COD BD ) for the LF was 83.0%. Treatment of the LF in high loading anaerobic reactors would be possible due to these COD characteristics. Specific methane production in terms of VS for the separated LF was 0.580 m 3  kg −1 . For dairy manure and SF, it was 0.320 and 0.258 m 3  kg −1 , respectively.