image: A new textbook, Animal Manure Recycling: Treatment and Management, draws from Danish expertise and spotlights technologies that are able to put environmental problems to work and ensure the use of animal manure's stinking wealth of resources. view more
Credit: Wiley
Humans the world over, are hungry for more meat, milk and eggs in their diets. Increased demand for these products has prompted explosive growth in livestock production and massive environmental consequences at local, regional and global levels. A new textbook, Animal Manure Recycling: Treatment and Management, draws from Danish expertise and spotlights technologies that are able to put environmental problems to work and ensure the use of animal manure's stinking wealth of resources.
Many people know that a steak's path to the dinner table has undesirable climatic and environmental consequences. Large increases in livestock production have given rise to enormous quantities of animal manure, amounts that present challenges in relation to waste management and environmental protection. A new textbook, written by leading experts from the University of Copenhagen and three other Danish universities, sheds light on environmentally friendly technologies that are able to manage and recycle animal manure both effectively and sustainably.
" If we are to solve the environmental problems and use manure as a resource, it requires robust interdisciplinary collaboration among professionals in the fields of environmental technology, industrial farm animal production and agriculture. They need to understand one another's 'language' to implement these solutions, which work in practice. We hope that the book will contribute to a better integration of know-how and mutual understanding between engineers, agricultural consultants and environmental biologists," explains one of the volume's authors, Professor Lars Stoumann Jensen of the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Science."
The professor adds that, "Denmark is assuming a leadership role in both farming and environmental technology and we therefore want to disseminate this unique know-how and simultaneously contribute to the export of Danish technology."
Textbook for practitioners and students
The book presents state-of-the-art knowledge in relation to each link in the chain of processes, from manure production through to the transformation of its last molecular remnants. It provides engineers, environmental consultants, agricultural consultants, ministerial staff and students with broad and thorough insight into the problems and solutions that relate to the management and utilisation of manure as an energy source, soil amendment and fertiliser.
The book is authored by a range of Danish and international experts and edited by Sven G. Sommer (University of Southern Denmark), Morten L. Christensen (Aalborg University), Thomas Schmidt (Aarhus University) and Lars Stoumann Jensen (University of Copenhagen). The textbook "Animal Manure Recycling: Treatment and Management", is published by Wiley, an international publishing house, and its editors are supported by Hoffmansgave, a Danish agro-industrial producer, and The Danish Industry Fund.
Fact Box
Book topics include:
- Laws and regulations regarding the management and utilisation of manure
- Organic and inorganic components in manure: characteristics and microbial composition
- Release and technological mitigation of manure emitted greenhouse gases, ammonia and odours
- Technologies and logistics for the management, transport and distribution of manure
- Bio-energy production and manure (thermal and biological)
- Upgrading of waste and reuse of nutrients in biofertilisers
- Life cycle analysis of manure management systems
- Innovation of technologies for the management and recycling of manure