Why Separate Solid and Liquid Waste?
The lagoon and spray field waste treatment technology used on most swine farms in North Carolina not only mixes solid and liquid wastes but dilutes the waste with water. The barns in which pigs are raised usually have concrete floors with slots in them. Swine waste drops through the slots to a pit below. From there, the waste is flushed with water into a lagoon. That’s an efficient way to deal with the waste if you don’t want to move it very far. However, the weight and volume of the diluted waste makes movement difficult and costly. And being able to move waste is often necessary if the waste is to be processed to produce value-added products. That’s why systems that separate the solid and liquid portions of the waste stream are part of many of the technologies being evaluated as part of the Smithfield/Premium Standard Farms/Frontline Farmers agreements. The solid portion of the waste stream particularly is a candidate for processing to produce value-added products. Separating the sol
