Project Number: 1265-12000-028-09
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Aug 01, 2006
End Date: Jul 31, 2011

Objective:
Develop and evaluate lab and farm-scale manure treatment methods to remove oxytetracycline and chlorotetracycline residues; Evaluate different agricultural and industrial by-products for co-digestion with animal manures for bioenergy production and antibiotic reduction.

Approach:
Chlortetracycline and oxytetracycline are broad-spectrum antibiotics used for prophylactic and therapeutic use in poultry, pigs, and cows. Results from laboratory-scale studies demonstrate that these compounds are rapidly degraded during composting of dairy manure-straw-woodchip mixtures. However, further research is necessary to properly evaluate this treatment method at the lab and farm scale with different types of animal wastes. In this research, engineering parameters for lab and farm-scale manure treatment systems will be developed and used to conduct antibiotic removal experiments. Although small dairy farms do not generate enough manure for electrical production from biogas, there are significant opportunities to combine other byproducts with the manure to significantly increase biogas production. Initial experiments using lab-scale reactors will be used to characterize biogas production and reactor parameters during co-digestion of dairy manure or poultry litter with a variety of organic by-products. Subsequent co-digestion experiments at pilot-scale will focus on a select group of by-products.