FROM WASTELAND TO PROMISEDLAND
Researchers are turning the waste of cattle feedlots and power plant residue into a promise of economic development.
Written by Leslie Woodard
There is a saying that what is one person's trash is another person's treasure. That's the premise of researchers from Texas Tech University and the Texas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit who are developing a system that would turn the wasteland of cattle feedlots and power plant residue into a promised land of economic development. These scientists have developed a system that integrates these much-maligned modern necessities into basic components of profit centers and energy savers.
Nick Parker, Ph.D., director of the Texas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and an adjunct professor of biology and of range, wildlife and fisheries management at Texas Tech, and Clifford Fedler, Ph.D., a professor of civil engineering, have been building and studying an aquaculture system since 1989. Parker and Fedler have developed a non-mechanical, gravity-flowing purification system for livestock waste. A series of recycling ponds takes in livestock waste, separates liquids and solids and filters wastewater before it flows to an area playa lake that feeds the Ogallala Aquifer, a natural underground water source for much of the Great Plains.
Groundwater below some feedlots contains high nitrogen levels, according to High Plains Underground Water Conservation District tests. As cattle manure lies on the ground, the waste naturally separates into liquid and solid components, and the liquid can infiltrate into the underground water supply.
"The nitrites and nitrates found in contaminated water are a human health risk because they combine with hemoglobin and prevent the carrying of oxygen. If nitrogen from the waste water filtrates into the groundwater, then we could have a public health risk," Parker said, explaining the need for such a purification system.
In the natural process of water purification, microorganisms as well as plant and animal life remove nitrogen and other unwanted nutrients. In fact, the various life forms in each recycling pond of the Fedler and Parker system, further purify the wastewater, making it suitable for the life forms in the next pond. The wastewater, now with nutrient levels safe for human consumption, returns to playa lakes and ultimately seeps into the Ogallala Aquifer.
Parker says their recent tests have included monitoring a number of fish species in the ponds to see if the fish would live in certain water conditions. They measure the growth rate of the fish; water quality including amount of ammonia, nitrites and nitrates present and other water quality concerns.
In the first pond, algae is grown and harvested to remove some of the nitrogen from the water. "In addition to reducing nitrogen levels, algae also are used as the basis for some pharmaceutical products. Suddenly the nitrogen liability has become an algae asset," Parker said.
As the waste products are "digested" in the first pond, energy is released in the first pond in the form of biogas, which is methane with about 40 percent carbon dioxide. Parker and Fedler designed a greenhouse-type bubble to capture the biogas. By capturing the carbon dioxide from the initial stages of digestion that normally would be going into the atmosphere, a livestock producer can use the carbon dioxide to enhance the growth of economically valuable plants.
In addition to algae, other plants that thrive from water treated in the first pond are duckweed and water lilies. Duckweed is the world's smallest flowering plant and floats on the surface of the water. It would be found in open playa lakes except the region's wind blows it to the edge of the pond. It is found in playas where plants such as cattails protect it from the wind. With a pond protected by a greenhouse-type cover, a producer simply skims the duckweed off the surface of the water.
Some of the most recent research by the Fedler and Parker team has studied the inclusion of duckweed into the diets of cattle, swine and sheep, in place of soy meal. Duckweed is about 40 percent protein and mixes well into the feed. The studies show the animals whose diets included the duckweed perform better than the group of animals who only had the soy meal as an additive. "Soy is a processed grain, whereas duckweed is a whole and complete plant material containing natural nutrient elements and vitamins," Parker said.
From the wastewater treatment system demonstration unit in place at the Texas Tech farm in New Deal, Fedler calculated that the amount of duckweed they are producing from that feedlot and treatment system can supply 11 percent of the protein needed by the cattle housed there. "Even in the cases of the swine and sheep, which we haven't finished the numbers on, the diet with the duckweed proved to be as good or better than the normal diet," Fedler said. "So if we can achieve the same quality of feed, by producing less expensive feed, recycling the wastewater and producing aquatic plants, this additive would be much more cost effective and take care of the waste problem at the same time."
Translated into human terms, Parker says you can find items in health food stores, such as algae, which are in capsule form or powder, that people are adding to their diets for better performance. Duckweed is just one example of a product that can be grown in this system that has high value. There are similar possibilities with other aquatic plants.
"A four-inch pot of some ornamental water lilies might sell for as much as $70. We have producers in Texas that export water lilies around the world," Parker said. "Why couldn’t West Texas producers do the same? These are the kinds of value-added products a cattle producer might create from this wastewater system," Parker said.
The economic benefit of combining aquaculture and agriculture is one issue that convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to fund Fedler and Parker's initial research. Since the original project began, Texas Tech's Integrated Wastewater Treatment and Aquaculture Production venture has received funding from national, state, local and industry sources.
Fedler's and Parker's research team has spent the last several years refining the operation of the system itself, but also finding viable ways to make the system work to producers' economic advantage.
"The most significant thing we've learned in the past few years is that it is economically feasible to recycle water and produce products of high value, while being environmentally and ecologically sound, rather than polluting surface water or the aquifer," Parker said.
Aside from the water purification issue itself, the two scientists see a greater goal in promoting the wastewater system as a viable tool for economic development.
"We look at gross rainfall, on a per capita basis, for the last 100 years average, we find that East Texas is more arid on a per capita basis than is West Texas. East Texas has less water per person based on rainfall than West Texas," Parker said.
Parker's chief concern is that West Texans are selling water and moving it to other places. "A number of cities have joined together to pay for developing a pipeline to carry water from the High Plains south. We know that there are other interests in the state who wish to put in pipelines to move water from the High Plains down into San Antonio, Houston and other places."
In areas like West Texas, where agricultural production is still such a major source of the economy, Parker says the area will lose jobs and opportunity if water is moved away from the High Plains to satisfy the needs of East Texas. It is simply a matter of market supply and demand.
"When San Antonio needs water and they can pay more for it than a producer can return from raising cotton or raising another crop, the landowners in West Texas will be forced economically to send their water to the east. When that happens we lose jobs, we lose stability, and West Texas will suffer in the long run," Parker said. "The problem is there is no multiplier effect. If producers use the water on the land, then they produce the crop, and then there are multiplier effects with related business, like tractor sales and fertilizer and processing and all these other things."
"It is not enough to use water, but we have to reuse water. Every time you reuse it, you create another set of job opportunities and more economic return, so you need to be able to link those into every gallon of water that is pumped and used for something."
Parker uses greenhouses as an example. With the recent change in the price of natural gas, Parker said, it seems unlikely that greenhouses using natural gas as a heat source are going to remain very competitive in northern parts of the state, compared to those that might be placed further south, where they would have to have fewer days of electricity.
"That opens up an opportunity, that we could use that biogas, which would be generated from the manure from the feed lots, and also use the heat generated by compost piles," Parker said. "Compost piles operate at about 160 degrees, so you simply capture that heat and put it back into greenhouses."
Parker reiterated the idea that there are a number of products being produced in greenhouses that have high value; so rather than raising crops in these greenhouses, which sell for pennies a pound, one might produce crops that sell for dollars per ounce. He said there are people who are producing chives in greenhouses, and shipping them all over the United States. Many people and companies are producing other high-value vegetable products as well as ornamental products.
"I've visited some sites in Israel where they're extracting the red color pigment from peppers, which is then sent to the United States. That extract becomes a very high-value product to use as a natural food-coloring agent. So they’re growing peppers, but they're not selling peppers themselves. They're selling something derived from peppers," Parker said.
So, Parker says, if high-value products can be produced, which they have proven, then a chain of jobs is created, not only by producing, but extracting, packaging and taking a product to market.
"What we're proposing is recycling some of our water, some of our organic waste and putting it back into greenhouses and providing the heat, the water and the nutrients. Today greenhouses are sitting out there, independent, and they pay for heat, they buy fertilizer and they're sitting alone," Parker said. "But if we move those greenhouses in with other components, which could be feedlots in the example that Dr. Fedler and I are using, or it could be municipal waste from municipal waste treatment plants, in a case of a municipality that has sludge to handle and waste to treat, then they have a nutrient-rich effluent. So those could be built back into reuse systems to produce high-value products.
"We think that in West Texas we must aggressively pursue this type of development if we're going to be sustainable and have a sustainable future up here, rather than piping all of our water to East Texas, and the jobs going with it," he said.
Now Parker and Fedler are working to market their wastewater purification process as an economic development and energy-saving tool for businesses, which are willing to take a chance on something new. They are receiving help with strategy from Texas Tech's Small Business Development Center.
"What we hope to do is present this to some of the communities around us that have the economic development tax, who are trying to find a way to improve jobs in their region," Parker said. "They're all under the gun by regulators, the EPA being one, to meet certain environmental quality standards for their effluents. So if we can find a way to take this waste, meet those environmental standards while producing something that has value, then we meet their needs in more than one way."
Parker used the example of Pinetop, Ariz., to illustrate his point. Pinetop has a ski resort area. The city was taking the sludge from its municipal wastewater treatment plant and putting it in landfills. When the Environmental Protection Agency strengthened the regulations regarding landfills, the price of landfills went up and the use of landfills became much more restricted. Putting things in landfills that didn't have to go there was economically unsound. Pinetop started combining the sludge from its wastewater municipal treatment plant with its solid waste from garbage trucks, and mixing those things together. When they were finished, they could sell everything that they produced, as a compost to go back into gardens. They could use it within the city and they also would sell it to nurseries and to others.
"So now they sell all the stuff - their garbage, along with their sludge." Parker said. "First they were putting it all in landfills, now they're selling it all. They also take the heat from the compost piles and heat their greenhouses. So here’s an example of a little city that has done what we're talking about doing. If someone wanted to go there and visit, they could see the system working. Ideally, we need some city to step forward to try our system."
Another answer, said Parker, would be that within this "test" city, if there is an existing cattle feed lot, and it is creating a problem because of environment, or ground water infiltration or nutrient enrichment, something could be done around that site, to use this source and treat it. If such a facility existed and there was land adjacent to it that could be used to locate this system in, that could be accomplished in fairly short order.
"But this would be an add-on system. That is, you're taking an existing facility and adding something to it," Parker explained. "You would not have the highest level of efficiency built into it because you would not have it designed for the flow for it to be as efficient as it could be."
"On the other hand, if you're starting from scratch and a town wants to build something like this to create new jobs, the town might find a site, put in a feedlot, put in all of these components downstream into this agricultural development/research type park, and put them in sequence so that the water flow, the nutrient flow, was all laid out in an efficient manner, rather than having to traffic pipes and wind things around with an add-on system."
The wastewater treatment system developed by Fedler and Parker has been proven effective through their years of research. By convincing cattle producers or municipalities to implement the system, it just might be the answer to taking away wastewater, while keeping the groundwater in West Texas. From the wasteland of feedlots, compost piles and power plant effluents, also could come new jobs, new sources of income and a new economic boost.
Story produced by the Office of Communications and Marketing
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