Recovery of gaseous ammonia released from livestock farms by recyclable adsorbent

We developed a new NH3 adsorption system for recovery of gaseous ammonia released from livestock farms. The system works with our originally-developed NH3 adsorbent with the performance of high NH3-selectivity, high-capacity, and high-recyclability. With the system, the NH3-concentraion in a pigpen was deceased by 70% compared with the case without the system. From a composting facility, we also succeeded to recover the most of NH3 in the exhaust gas. The system enables to reduce the NH3 emission to atmosphere, to make recovered NH3 to the resource such as fertilizer, and to make the efficient breeding of livestock.

Ammonia, NH3, known as a precursor of PM2.5, is mainly emitted from agricultural sector to air. Livestock farm has a large contribution in the NH3 emission. In addition, the odor problem of NH3 is also often serious. Ammonia generated at livestock barns and composting facilities is usually released by air ventilation, but the method often affects negatively to the growth of the livestock due to the difficulty of temperature control in the barn. On the other hand, if the NH3-emission into the air is stopped, the high concentration of NH3 in the barn would have a bad influence on the livestock growth. To solve the problem, we developed a new NH3-removal system with our originally-developed adsorbent. We tested the performance of the system at a realistic pigpen and a composting facility.