Circular NP - Better nutrient recycling from animal manure

The Kalmar region, with its intensive animal production, is a major source of losses of plant nutrients to the Baltic Sea. This can be to some extent traced to manure management which, if handled incorrectly, can lose a lot of plant nutrients. The nutrient composition of manure is not optimal for the actual needs of the crops, unlike factory-produced mineral fertilizers, and this often leads to an excess of certain nutrients. These excess nutrients can eventually end up in the Baltic Sea.

Within the five-year project Better nutrient recycling from animal manure, BalticWaters2030, RISE and SLU together with the biogas plant More Biogas, near Kalmar, will test and demonstrate different techniques for processing the biofertilizer that the plant produces. The goal is to produce at least two different fertilizers with different compositions according to user needs. Of these two, one fertilizer will be adapted for nearby farms and the other will be more adapted for crop farms that are further away and thus require a concentrated product that can be transported profitably.

Producing specially adapted fertilizers in this way enables a redistribution of plant nutrients from animal farms to plant farms. This leads to a more efficient utilization of the manure plant growth and thus reduced eutrophication of the Baltic Sea. The effect of the measures will be quantified via case studies.

Goals

The goal of the project is to reduce the agricultural surplus of both phosphorus and nitrogen in the Kalmar region, which means less nutrient leakage to the Baltic Sea. At the same time, crop farms will have the opportunity to increase their sustainability through the use of recycled plant nutrients and thus reduce their dependence on newly extracted phosphorus, a finite resource, and mineral nitrogen produced with fossil energy. Mineral fertilizer nitrogen is produced with natural gas and the phasing out of this will be an important step towards fossil-free food production. The project will also investigate the potential to produce green nitrogen at More Biogas so that nearby agriculture has a reduced need to use fossil-produced mineral fertilizer nitrogen while the region's bus fleet can be supplied with renewable biogas.

Sökord

Circular economy, bioeconomy, recycled fertilizers, manure based fertilizes