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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Bowling Green, Kentucky » Food Animal Environmental Systems Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #225867
Title: Greenhouse Gases Emission from Land Application of Swine Waste Water: A Comparison of Three Different Swine Slurry Application Methods

Author
item Lovanh, Nanh
item Warren, Jason
item Sistani, Karamat

Submitted to: Mitigating Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/1/2008
Publication Date: 5/19/2008
Citation: Lovanh, N.C., Warren, J.G., Sistani, K.R. 2008. Greenhouse Gases Emission from Land Application of Swine Waste Water: A Comparison of Three Different Swine Slurry Application Methods. Mitigating Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Agricultural activities (including land application of animal manures) account for about 20% of the total human induced global warming budget due to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Recently, there has been an increasing emphasis on controlling these emissions from livestock operations. One of the mitigation techniques in reducing emissions of GHG from land application of liquid manures is the utilization of hose-drag-type equipment. This hose-drag-type equipment does not suffer from evaporation and drift like the traditional irrigation-type equipment or spraying. Gas emissions during land application from the hose-drag-type equipment are reduced compared to irrigation-type equipment due to low pressure at the discharge point, and the discharge is close to the ground surface. Also, most of these hose-drag-type equipments incorporate aeration tines that aerate the soil and promote infiltration to reduce emissions. Therefore, our goal is to monitor the initial greenhouse gas emissions from three different liquid manure application methods at a farm in Larue County, KY, using flux chamber and gas analyzer. Swine slurry was applied to a farm land that was divided into subplots. Row injection, surface spray, and aerway injection were utilized to apply the slurry. Greenhouse gases (GHG) concentrations were monitored using a photo acoustic gas analyzer (CAI, CA). The gas concentrations were measured at two different temporal points (beginning and 72 after application). At each sampling time, the concentrations were measured every half an hour with half an hour allocation for equilibrium with the atmospheric conditions. Two fans were used in the flux chamber for thorough mixing of gases before and during sampling. The results showed that the initial fluxes of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide range from 2576 (aerway injection) to 210 mg m-2 hr-1 (row injection), 433 (aerway injection) to 155 g m-2 hr-1 (row injection), and 408 (aerway injection) to 188 mg m-2 hr-1 (row injection), respectively. Thus, the row injection method appears to emit the least amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.