[Creativity][Green Energy] Pig Farmer's Good Idea Turns Pig Manure into Green Energy

[Creativity][Green Energy] Pig Farmer's Good Idea Turns Pig Manure into Green Energy (Chinese Version)

Taiwan Environmental Information Center (2010/12/21) In order to improve the fecal contamination prevention in river areas, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), Executive Yuan, designs “swine toilet” and spends effort on promoting “clean swine farm,” assisting 100 swine farms to build demonstration pigsty with swine toilet, with the design of which the swine manure is easy to collect and be transformed into compost or biofuels.

“Clean swine farm” is an idea to build pig manure holder in the corners of the pigsty. After some training, pigs can learn to “go to the toilet” by themselves. This was observed ten years ago by a pig farmer, who once discarded the window grille of his house in pigsty and found that pigs learned to use it as toilet. This idea was picked up by EPA and after a ten-year study, the administration begins to adopt the method to improve the condition of pig farms.

General-Director of the EPA Department of Water Quality Protection Yung-hsing HSU (許永興, trans. Temp.) points out, the pig farming industry in Taiwan is in a scale of about 6,120,000 pigs, centering around Changhua County, Yunlin County, Chiayi County, Kaohsiung County and Pingtung County. The waste water produced from the farms takes 26% of the river contamination. By estimation, if all the pig farms are equipped with pig toilet, the waste water can be reduced above 50%, while the recycled pig manure can be used as compost or developed into biofuels.

Yung-hsing HSU says, traditional pig farms keep clean by daily flushing. The combination of water and pig manure will induce high density organic waste water and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous, which are the major loading source of the water as well as air pollution (for H2S induces stink smell). Besides, the flushing will make piglets sick and impact the survival rate.

The design of pig toilet can not only reduce the pollution but also increase the survival rate of piglets. Moreover, the collected pig manure can be turned into compost or biofuels. A simple discovery by a pig farmer turns out to make a stone killing more than two birds!


Further Information:
Taiwan Environmental Information Center 2010/12/21 (Chinese)

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