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Turning manure into clean water

Turning manure into clean water

Regenis has designed a special system for dairy farms

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A dairy farm in Deming, Wash. is installing innovative technology capable of turning livestock manure into clean, usable water.

Coldstream Farms will put in a clean water membrane system from Regenis, an agricultural waste solutions company.

The system uses nanofiltration and reverse osmosis to turn 22,000 gallons of cow manure into 12,000 gallons of clean water each day.

Finding avenues to reuse finite resources such as water is important to agriculture, said Michael Grossman, a Regenis spokesman.

“The whole idea of sustainability is to close the loop and waste nothing,” he told Farms.com today.

Once the system cleans the water, it “can be released into local watersheds to increase the local water supply,” he said. “Over the course of a year, this system will make about 4.3 million liters of clean water.”

Once the system separates the liquid and solid materials, it can generate 8,000 gallons of nitrogen and potassium that farmers can use as fertilizer.

The technology represents less waste and better environmental stewardship for farmers, said Galen Smith, co-owner of Coldstream Farms.

“Nothing should ever be wasted when you look holistically at the dairying process,” he said in a release Monday. “We believe in being good stewards of our land and providing a wholesome product to our customers. Growing our crops with chemically free nutrients and putting clean water back into our local streams is just another step along the way to closing the loop.”

U.S. and Canadian farmers can begin placing orders for a clean water membrane system beginning Aug 1.

Producers could receive the system in anywhere from four to months. But the process could take longer if they want larger systems, Grossman said.

“The system we are installing at Coldstream Farms can be containerized,” he said. “A farm wanting to treat more than 80,000 gallons of manure per day would require a separate building.”


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