Source: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS submitted to NRP
ANIMAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS: SYNTHESIS OF METHODS TO DETERMINE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE SUSTAINABILITY FROM FINDINGS OF REDUCTIONIST RESEARCH
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1012294
Grant No.
(N/A)
Cumulative Award Amt.
(N/A)
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
S-1032
Project Start Date
Mar 14, 2017
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2018
Grant Year
(N/A)
Program Code
[(N/A)]- (N/A)
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
(N/A)
FAYETTEVILLE,AR 72703
Performing Department
Biological & Agr Engineering
Non Technical Summary
Arkansas is ranked #2 in poultry production in the nation, which generate about 1.3 million metric tons of litter annually. Up to this date, there are virtually no cost-effective methods available to deal with this waste stream environmentally and resourcefully other than land application, which, over the years, is linked to environmental issues in many places in the state due to the saturation of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) in the soil receiving the litter application, increasing the potential of surface and ground water pollution caused by nutrients runoff and/or leaching from overloaded soils. To safeguard the environment, effective technologies are needed to treat poultry litter in order to reduce its polluting power and at the same time recover its additional values other than being used solely as cropland fertilizer. The ultimate goals of this research will be to protect the soil and water and natural resources in Arkansas, and in the nation as well, by reducing the volume of wastes produced and maximizing the value-added products production and environmental benefits so the agricultural production can be sustained in a long run.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
30%
Developmental
40%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
40232992020100%
Knowledge Area
402 - Engineering Systems and Equipment;

Subject Of Investigation
3299 - Poultry, general/other;

Field Of Science
2020 - Engineering;
Goals / Objectives
Engage collaborators from the needed broad range of disciplines, institutions, and stakeholder groups to catalyze conceptual and quantitative synthesis, collaboration, and data sharing Facilitate organization, synthesis, and integration of component-based research findings and supporting data and Discover (or reveal), substantiate, and interpret the broader impacts of component-level modifications to animal-production systems.
Project Methods
A series of well-designed experiments will be carried out for this project including co-digestion poultry litter with other animal wastes, the effect of carbon to nitrogen ratio, temperature, and pH on digestion efficiency, the effect of hydraulic retention times and organic loading rates, water cleaning techniques to lower ammonia concentration, etc. For each group of factors, multiple levels of each influencing factor will be studied and statistical designs of experiments will be used for comparing different treatments and optimizing the treatment system. The research information will be delivered to the public via major available means such as publications, websites, teaching/extension materials, extension and outreach, and experiential learning opportunities. Evaluations of the project success will rely on surveys from theproducers as to the extent of them havingbeen educated by the new technology and havingindicated their willingness to adopt the developed technology.Since there are fivemajor research objectivesin this project, the methods will be presented based on the specific objectives.Objective 1: Co-digesting poultry litter with other animal wastes In this project, different mixing ratios of poultry litter with either liquid swine or dairy manure will be investigated to determine the feasibility of this technology based on biogas production, methane content in biogas, volatile solids destruction, COD and BOD reduction.Objective 2: The effect of carbon/nitrogen ratio, temperature, and pH In this study, four C/N ratios will be investigated, i.e., 15/1, 20/1, 25/1, and 30/1 to determine the optimal C/N ratio for biogas production and reduction in COD and BOD. With varying C/N ratios, a range of three pH values (6.5, 7.0, and 7.5) will also be investigated at the same time, which comprises a 3x4 experimental design. Batch tests will be employed using 1 L flasks as digesters and the total volume of biogas produced will be measured using the water displacement method. The methane and CO2 content of the biogas will be determined using a gas chromatograph. All the experiments will be carried out under mesophilic temperature condition (37oC).Objective 3: The effect of hydraulic retention time (HRT) and organic loading rate (OLR) A continuous, lab-scale anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR) system will be built to investigate the effect of HRT and OLR on the co-digestion performance of poultry litter. Four HRT (3, 6, 9, and 12 days) will be examined with 3-4 OLRs to determine the optimal running parameters in terms of pH, HRT, C/N ratio, and OLR for the methane ASBR to produce methane continuously and efficiently. Information obtained can be used to design a scale-up reactor that can be transferred into a pilotscale system for farm use.Objective 4: Solid state digestion of poultry litter The basic idea is to extract the ammonia, which is detrimental to the digestion process, before digestion. There are a number of methods to extract ammonia from poultry litter including using water, chemicals, and even ammonia strippers. However, soaking poultry litter in water to solubilize ammonia initially present is a simple but potentially more applicable method that has not been extensively examined. The solids digestion after ammonia extraction needs more research to determine the maximal solids level that the digestion process can handle. The outcomes from this project may lead to an applicable technology for on-farm treatment of poultry litter cost effectively.Objective 5: Beneficial use of the solid fraction of the digestates Experiments will be designed to examine two fungi species, Pleurotus ostreatus and Agrocybe aegerita, for breaking down lignocellulosic residues in the digestate to produce mushroom. Rice straw (RS) will be chopped to 5 cm pieces and then mixed with the digestate solids (DS) at different levels (RS/DS: 100, 85, 70, 55, 40, 25, 10, 0). A single factor randomized design with eight levels of the factor combinations will be adopted for this study. Each substrate combination will be replicated in four bags and a random sample will be taken from each bag for a total of 32 experimental units. Mushroom yields, lignocellulosic enzyme production and substrate utilization, and mushroom fruit body production in relation to lignocellulosic enzyme activity will be the variables to be investigated.

Progress 03/14/17 to 09/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences reached by this research include the scientific community and the concerned industries bythree journal articles and two papers presented in the Annual Meeting of American Society of Agricultural and BiologicalEngineers over this period of project. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Over the project period, the opportunities provided by this project for training and professional development include providingtraining to postdocs, MS and PhD students, undergrad honors students, and First-Year Engineering Program undergradstudents in conducting research and obtaining hands-on experience in conducting experiments, analyzing and compiling data,and writing scientific publications. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Over the entire project period, there are 8 refereed journal articles and 9 non-refereed ASABE papers made available to thepublic, through which the research information was disseminated to a variety of users and stakeholders. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The objectiveof this project is focused on providing information to the thirdmajor goal listed above, i.e., discover (or reveal), substantiate, and interpret the broader impacts of component-level modifications to animal-production systems. The major accomplishments over the entire project period are listed below. Maintaining an appropriate C/N ratio alone could not guarantee high methane yields and biogas volumes produced. A polynomial regression between free ammonia nitrogen (FAN)and the methanogenic activity was obtained with the correlation coefficient being 0.9472. A FAN inhibitory threshold concentration was found to be 253.9 mg/L and a total loss of methane production was at 1000 mg/L. An optimal TS content for anaerobic digestion of poultry litter with straw appeared to be around 4.15% to achieve the best biogas yield. Volatile fatty acids, as a carbon source, can be produced by pretreating animal manure to some extent, and the VFAs such produced can be used for subsequent denitrification processes Microbial fuel cell can be run on diluted animal manure to produce electricity, which offers another way to use animal wastes as a renewable resource to reduce the demand on natural resources.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Lin, H., S. Wu, J. Zhu. 2018. Modeling power generation and energy efficiencies in air-cathode microbial fuel cells based on Freter equations. Applied Science 8(10):1983.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Shen, J., J. Zhu. 2018. Kinetics of poultry litter in a leach bed reactor with agitation based on two mechanisms: enzymatic hydrolysis and direct solubilization. Biochemical Engineering Journal 135 (15): 115-122.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: 3. Wu, S., L. Chen, J. Zhu, M. Walquist, D. Christian. 2018. Pre-digestion to enhance volatile fatty acids (VFAs) concentration as a carbon source for denitrification in treatment of liquid swine manure. J. Environ. Sci. Health Part A 53(10): 891-898.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: 1. Wu, S., L. Chen, J. Zhu. 2018. Enhancing volatile fatty acids concentration by pre-digestion to be used as a carbon source for denitrification in liquid swine manure treatment. ASABE Annual International Meeting paper#: 1800068, Detroit, MI. July 29-Aug.1, 2018.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: 2. Wu, S., S. Deng, H. Hsie, J. Zhu. 2018. Evaluation of a novel liquid plasma reactor to convert soybean oil to biodiesel. ASABE Annual International Meeting paper#: 1800194, Detroit, MI. July 29-Aug.1, 2018.


Progress 03/14/17 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences reached by this research include the scientific community and the concerned industries by three journal articles and two papers presented in the Annual Meeting of American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in Spokane, WA from July 16 to July 20, 2017. Changes/Problems:No changes whatsoever. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The opportunities provided by this project for training and professional development include providing training to PhD student, undergrad honors students, and Freshmen Engineering Program undergrad students in conducting research and obtaining hands-on experience in analyzing and compiling data. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Listed in the "Product" section are the results of this research that have been disseminated to users through refereed journal publications and conference papers and presentations. In this period, there are 3 refereed journal articles and two ASABE papers were made available to the public. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Whether using anaerobic digestion technique to treat dry poultry litter is successful depends on the water treatment technology development, which means that if the nutrients in the digester effluent can be effectively removed, and the water cleaned, the water can be recycled back to the digester for further use without interfering with the normal digester performance. Research in this aspect will continue to search and develop cost effective technologies to clean up the effluent. The construction of a lab-scale litter digester is close to completion and some preliminary trials were carried out to test the operational feasibility of the device. More work will be done to improve the digestion efficiency and the water cleaning effectiveness. Some advanced water cleaning technologies may also be looked into to determine the feasibility of using these technologies for water treatment. The outcomes of this research will be reported in the next reporting period.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The results presented accomplish component based objectives by developing and/or modifying existing models to describe the anaerobic digestion process applied to treatment of poultry litter. Modified Gompertz model has been widely used to simulate the kinetics of microbial growth and bio-products production. However, the intrinsic shortcoming of this model rests with its inability of meeting the initial condition of bio-products. A general Gompertz model for microbial growth and its 2-parameter form were developed in this study, both of which can reduce to the original Gompertz model. The developed model for microbial growth was further extended to account for bioproducts and substrate consumption by means of the corresponding yield coefficients. All the models developed herein could meet the initial conditions of microbial growth, bio-products, and substrate consumption. Batch experiments of anaerobic codigestions of poultry litter and wheat straw at 2% total solids level consisting of 100, 75, and 50% VS of poultry litter were conducted to verify the model. The maximum specific methane volumes were obtained to be 207, 134, 5.18 mL (g VS)?1 for 50, 75, and 100% VS co-digestion, respectively. The developed model for bio-products was successfully applied to cumulative methane volumes produced from anaerobic co-digestion. The model parameters obtained from the bio-products model combined with the corresponding yield coefficients were applied to the microbial and substrate models to predict the microbial and substrate changes during co-digestion, with the relative errors being less than 2.21% for the former and 4.46% for the latter, respectively.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shen, J., J. Zhu. 2017. Development of general Gompertz models and their simplified two-parameter forms based on specific microbial growth rate for microbial growth, bio-products and substrate consumption. Advances in Biotechnology & Microbiology 4(3): 555640. DOI: 10.19080/ AIBM.2017.04.555640.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shen, J., J. Zhu. 2017. Methane production in an upflow anaerobic biofilm digester from leachates derived from poultry litter at different organic loading rates and hydraulic retention times. Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering 5:5124-5130.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shen, J., J. Zhu. 2017. Modeling kinetics of anaerobic co-digestion of poultry litter and wheat straw mixed with municipal wastewater in a continuously mixed digester with biological solid recycle using batch experimental data. Chemical Engineering Communications 204(4):501-511.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shen, J., J. Zhu. 2017. Role of Hydrolysis in Two-phase Anaerobic Digestion System for Poultry Litter. ASABE Annual International Meeting paper#: 1700072, Spokane, WA. July 17-20, 2017.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shen, J., J. Zhu. 2017. Simulation of Unstable Kinetics of Continuously Mixed Anaerobic Digester with Biological Solid Recycle using Parameters Obtained from Batch Experiments. ASABE Annual International Meeting paper#: 1700073, Spokane, WA. July 17-20, 2017.