RESEARCH ARTICLE


Air Treatment Techniques for Abatement of Emissions from Intensive Livestock Production



Roland W. Melse*, a, Nico W.M. Oginkb, Wim H. Rulkens
a Animal Sciences Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre, P.O. Box 65, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands
b Sub-Department of Environmental Technology, Wageningen University and Research Centre. P.O. Box 8129, 6700 EV Wageningen, The Netherlands


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Creative Commons License
© 2009 Melse et al.;

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Animal Sciences Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre, P.O. Box 65, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands; Tel: +31 320 293174; Fax: +31 317 475347; E-mail: roland.melse@wur.nl


Abstract

Intensive livestock production is connected with a number of environmental effects, including emissions of ammonia (NH3), greenhouse gases (CH4 and N2O), odour, and particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5). Possible strategies for emission reduction include feed management, adaptation of housing design, and, in case of mechanically ventilated animal houses, the application of end-of-pipe air treatment, viz acid scrubbers and bioscrubbers. Air treatment techniques can achieve very high emission reductions (up to 100% ammonia removal for acid scrubbers). Furthermore, air treatment offers the possibility to achieve removal of not just one compound but of a combined removal of a variety of pollutants (ammonia, odour and particulate matter) at the same time. The successful application of scrubbers is of increasing importance as intensive livestock operations have to comply with ever stricter regulations and emission limits. Research is needed to address topics such as reduction of costs (both investment and operational costs), improvement of process control to guarantee stable removal efficiencies, decrease of N2O production in bioscrubbers, and increase of odour removal efficiency.

Keywords: Air treatment, ammonia, NH3, odour,, acid scrubber,, bioscrubber, biotrickling filter,, livestock production, animal husbandry.