A "pioneering" £1m project transforming dairy cow slurry into crop fertilisers and water has been launched by researchers at Harper Adams.
The university has been awarded the research funding from Defra to convert slurry from dairy cows into crop fertilisers, generating water for further use.
As part of it, researchers will convert slurry from a residue product into something which they say is more valuable to farmers.
It will develop elentecBio’s novel technology at farm-scale to separate water for further use and recover phosphorous, nitrogen and organic matter from cattle slurry.
The technology works through electrocoagulation, a treatment technology that adds an electrical charge to water as a way of recovering nutrients.
The separated nutrients can be applied to growing crops, instead of spreading high-water content, low nutrient slurries or synthetic fertilisers.
Previous research has demonstrated that elentecBio’s recovered nutrient fractions are highly bioavailable to crops – meaning they can be absorbed easily by the plants.
Previous studies have also shown that it can promote significantly higher crop and root-mass yields compared to slurry and synthetic fertilisers.
Harper Adams researchers say the technology will provide farmers with a cost-effective method for processing slurry, enabling cost-effective nutrient application to land with reduced environmental impacts.
The recovered nutrients can be sold off-farm, generating new income streams for dairy farmers and compliance with developing environmental legislation.
Dr Marie Kirby, senior lecturer at Harper Adams, added: “There are many potential benefits from slurry, but its application to farmed land is problematic in areas with increased susceptibility to pollution.
"This project will convert slurry from a residue product into something which is more valuable to farmers.”
elentecBio’s technology is modular in design and has been designed to be scalable and retrofitted to existing slurry systems.
The technology has already been demonstrated to work in other industrial applications.
Dr Jayne Brookman, CEO of elentecBio, said the £1m award would support the development of a slurry treatment product "backed by excellent science".
"The treatment will deliver a compact, robust, scalable process for efficient fractionation of dairy farm slurry," she said.
"It will provide farmers with an opportunity to deliver environmental benefits whilst improving their farm profitability."
