Renewable Nutrients, LLC, a firm focused on nutrient extraction, recovery, and reuse, has announced that it will be piloting its Quick Wash™ phosphorus extraction and recovery process at Walk Stock Farm, a large swine production farm in Neoga, IL, in late August 2015.
“This will mark our first in-field operation in the animal agriculture sector, outside of small, bench scale tests in the laboratory,” said Jeff Dawson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Renewable Nutrients. “We couldn’t be more pleased in the interest that Walk Stock Farm has expressed in finding a scalable, economical solution to recovering phosphorus from their swine waste. The Renewable Nutrients team is eager to test and prove Quick Wash’s effectiveness and practicality for on-farm operations,” added Dawson.
Quick Wash has been successfully piloted at waste water treatment facilities throughout the mid-Atlantic, including Ephrata, PA, Westminster, MD, and Greenville, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh, NC. The upcoming pilot at Walk Stock Farm represents the first time Quick Wash will be tested and utilized to extract and recover phosphorus from animal manure in a real-world, on-farm scenario. “We have been following Renewable Nutrients’ rollout of their Quick Wash technology within the waste water treatment industry, and we feel that it’s a very promising solution for reducing and recovering the phosphorus loads in our hog manure,” said Roger Walk, President of Walk Stock Farms. “If Quick Wash can extract an acceptable level of phosphorus from our manure, we feel we will have a very sustainable—perhaps future-proof—solution for managing our manure and transporting and spreading it on our crop fields. We are excited to host this first animal agriculture-specific pilot of the Quick Wash system, and we look forward to seeing it in operation and reviewing its performance,” added Walk.
Animal and plant growing operations throughout the country (specifically in areas close to or leading to fragile watersheds) are under increasing pressure to employ best farming practices that eliminate or lessen nutrient runoff from crop fields where manure has been applied. Given a tool—like Quick Wash—to extract and recover phosphorus from animal manure, farmers can spread the resultant low or no-phosphorus manure without fear of phosphorus runoff or soil saturation. Quick Wash also provides farmers with a means of selling the extracted phosphorus on the open market or engaging in the trading of nutrient credits.
“Quick Wash has surfaced as a proven and practical methodology for reducing phosphorus loads in waste water treatment plant sludge and effluent,” said Mike Schmid, Chief Marketing Officer at Renewable Nutrients. “It only makes sense to extend this new technology to the animal agriculture sector, where it can basically eliminate the occurrence of non-point source runoff of phosphorus, and provide farmers with an efficient, scalable means of extracting and recovering such a valuable nutrient from their animal waste,” added Schmid.
