Incineration system disposes of hog manure

["Jackie Hunt Christensen" <jchristensen@iatp.org>]

Incineration system disposes of hog manure
Monday, January 25, 1999 
By The Patriot-News

No more angry citizens opposing plans for a factory hog farm. No more foul
odors from freshly spread manure, or the risk of water pollution, fish
kills and environmental fines. 

Donald C. Noll believes he can solve a problem that has bedeviled the
nation's hog industry -- getting rid of large volumes of manure without
bothering anybody. 

"This system can be used on any farm," he said. "With this system, they can
add more hogs." 

Noll, 54, is president, chief executive officer and chief engineer of
Kutztown-based Sun Combustion Inc., which has 12 employees. The UCLA
graduate has 35 years in the business of creating and building
special-purpose burners. 

"I'm the guy they call when nobody else can solve it," he said with more
than a little pride. 

Noll began exploring the hog-manure problem at the request of a farmer
friend in Colorado, where voters in November passed a referendum setting
rules on the industry. 

Six months of work and $500,000 later, he has a prototype of a system to
burn large quantities of manure-water slurry, recapture and purify the
water, and provide cooling, air cleansing and waste heat for the farm. 

It is parked in a large garage in Forty Fort, where, on a frigid January
morning recently, Noll and several employees fired up the system and burned
a load of medical waste -- it has a variety of potential uses. 

Ticking off its attributes, Noll said the system is odorless, meets all
federal air-emission limits, and leaves the farmer with a small volume of
ash that can be placed in a landfill. He uses the example of a 2,800-sow
farm producing 15,000 gallons of manure a day. About 1.1 percent of that
would remain as ash. 

The cost to the farmer is between $1.5 million and $2.5 million, or about 5
cents a gallon of manure slurry. And Noll promises a three-year return on
the investment. 

Farmers tell him it's still cheaper to just spread the manure on nearby
fields, the way they've been doing it for generations. But he sees a day
coming soon when federal environmental and workplace-safety regulators will
declare the old ways must end. 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials have publicly identified
agricultural runoff as a major source of water pollution. Noll said he has
visited hog farms with indoor ammonia levels that far exceed amounts
allowed by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

"They're looking at it like they're going to beat it," he said of hog
farmers. "And they're not going to beat it." 

Noll has developed burners for many different industries, including
Connaught Laboratories in Swiftwater. That company retrofitted an existing
incinerator with a 3.2-million BTU burner for incinerating eggs used to
grow vaccines. 

Rick Everett, an engineer at Connaught, said it worked fine, although the
company has since adopted a different method. "Oh yeah, no problem," he said. 

Noll's system for hog manure can be either permanently installed at a farm
or mounted on two trailers and moved from farm to farm to process manure
slurry. A mobile unit could be owned by a group of farmers or by a third
party, he said. 

In either the stationary or mobile model, manure slurry is pumped into the
burn chamber through nozzles developed by Noll that he says can handle 40
to 50 percent solids. 

The slurry is converted to a fine mist that will not extinguish flames in
the burn chamber. Water is driven off and ammonia is burned by the intense
1,800-degree heat. 

The entire system is built with off-the-shelf components, Noll said, and
cleaning and maintenance are within the abilities of the average farmer. 

Noll said he is negotiating with three potential customers for his system,
but declines to say who they are. He said farmers have expressed reluctance
to incur the expense when hog prices are at near-historic lows. 

"If I get one in operation, there's no doubt they'll buy it because it
solves the problem," he said. 
 
Copyright 1999, The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, All Rights