Study of Greenhouse Gas Emission from Young Cattle Manure Processing

Introduction. Present calculations of greenhouse gas emissions follow IPCC estimates, which use the aggregated calculation methods and do not reflect the country-specific details, so they do not give a true picture of the current situation in agriculture. Assessment depends on calculation accuracy, improvable through taking into account Russia-specific technologies and on actual measurements during manure processing. Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at quantifying greenhouse gas emissions with an experimental setup that simulates real conditions of processing young cattle bedding manure by composting. Materials and Methods. For the study there was used a validated experimental setup with a sealed ventilated chamber. The setup simulated the technology for composting young cattle bedding manure in terms of its natural heating and measured concentrations of climate-active substances. The study had three repetitions across four temperature modes. The study included the preparatory stage (chemical analysis, weighing and loading of manure); main stage (simulation of processing conditions and monitoring of pollutant concentrations); and final stage (manure unloading and weighing). The study measured the gas content with the use of the four-channel gas analyzer ELAN Plus. The study analyzed the experimental data via Microsoft Excel. Statistical significance was evaluated using Student's t-test. Results. The concentrations of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, methane and carbon dioxidein young cattle manure emissions were determined with the use of four temperature modes. Mean concentrations are within standard deviation intervals confirming statistical reliability. Discussion and Conclusions. The analytical literature review was used to choose the optimal configuration of an experimental setup. Measured gas concentrations showed statistical correlation with comparable published researches. Future work requires deve­loping a computational model, which takes into account diverse technologies for handling manure and makes possible the conversion of greenhouse gas concentrations to specific emission factors.