Standard method to evaluate the performance of solid liquid separator for swine liquid manure

In eastern Canada, the swine production is very important, causing swine manure management to be difficult in some regions. The land’s saturation in phosphorus in some regions and the new regulations in progress will modify the traditional manure management. To use advantageously the ammonium in the liquid manure, the phosphorus has to be extracted. It is advantageous to extract the solid part of the manure, since the phosphorus is part of the solid. In this way, the producer can fertilized the crop adequately with the liquid part. Many technologies exist to extract the solid part of the manure. The manufacturers generally present the performance of these technologies. The results obtained from the manufacturers are difficult to compare from each other due to the disparities in the studies and relations used to calculate the extraction efficiency. The main objective of the project was to develop a standard method to evaluate the performance of mechanical separators. This method includes a table to help considering the sampling precision and the equations used to evaluate the separation efficiency for different elements such as dry matter, phosphorus, heavy metal, etc. To validate this method, three different separation technologies were tested with different swine manure composition.