Ammonia Removal and Recovery System Integrated with Anaerobic Digestion for Mitigating Air and Water Quality Impacts of Animal Operations

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) continue to experience every increasing pressure regarding nutrient overloads and air and water environmental concerns on their farms. Additionally the producers are subject to every growing and skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer costs. This USDA SBIR Phase I project aims to demonstrate an innovative technology that recovers ammonia nitrogen from CAFO anaerobic digester (AD) manure effluent and turn an environmental liability into a product that can be exported off the farms. The anticipated result of the project is the development of a technology that can be integrated into the existing AD processes to expand AD's capability in nutrient recovery. The additional capital costs and operating costs incurred by inclusion of the technology will be in part remediated by providing both a nutrient-decreased effluent and saleable bio-fertilizer products.