Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

The direct disposal of nutrient rich wastewaters or manure slurries into the environment can lead to several issues such as introduction of manure based pathogens, eutrophication and pollution of surface run off and ground water. Many farming communities have adopted safe manure management strategies to provide a healthy environment and healthy ecosystems. Different approaches for manure treatment include conventional activated sludge or anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic digestion is an effective treatment for pathogen removal and the process also converts the carbon to biogas or methane. However the effluent from these digesters is a liquid, rich in nitrogen (ammonia and nitrates) and phosphates which may require further treatment before being discharged into a receiving body of water. The objectives of this project are to integrate micro-algal technologies into farms operations involving anaerobic biogas digesters in order to continuously treat biogas digester effluent and produce value in the form of micro-algae, algal lipids, protein supplements and clean water for recycle into farm operations. Another objective of this proposal is to utilize carbon dioxide (CO2) generated from biogas combustion or from co-gen plants on-site for the micro-algae growth. The project will involve utilizing a pilot test unit for treating initially 500 L per day to potentially 5000 L per day of digester effluent. While research will be carried out at the University of Western Ontario, this pilot scale unit will be specifically set-up on-site on a farm, Stanton Farms located in Ilderton, Ontario. The latter (a 2000 cow dairy farm) has one of the largest on-farm biogas facilities in Canada for treating manure effluent. Our group at UWO has been collaborating with Stanton Farms over the past two years using lab scale studies to investigate the growth of microalgae on the digester effluent. Based on the results obtained in our lab, Stanton Farms is keenly interested in moving the research from the laboratory environment into the field and willing to serve as a test site.