Carbon Reduction and Recycling From Agriculture Waste.
This thesis investigates alternative closed-loop treatment approaches for agriculture waste to recycle carbon and nutrients, using solid/liquid separation and conversion into renewable biogas energy. Agronomic use of nutrients in wastes is also examined. This aims to ultimately reduce environmental impacts. Research to date has highlighted the need for full-scale separation experiments and biochemical methane potential (BMP) data was lacking for Australian Dairy effluent (ADE). To date, full-scale trials were performed with a novel separation device, called Z-Filter. Further laboratory experiments will study mechanisms of flocculation and will measure BMP for ADE. Early full-scale results using polymer flocculant achieved Nitrogen, Phosphorous and dry matter removal of 48.81(±6.12)%, 79.87(±12.55)%, 72.43(±7.22)%, respectively, whereas without chemicals, much less dry matter and nutrients were removed.