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Enhancing Dairy Lagoon Performance With High-Rate Anaerobic Digesters, Gary L. Hawkins, D. Raj Raman, Robert T. Burns, Ronald E. Yoder, Tim L. Cross

D. Raj Raman

In a two–stage study, the possibility of using high–rate anaerobic digesters to enhance the performance of dairy lagoons was explored. Four anaerobic sequencing batch reactors (ASBR) and four downflow anaerobic filters (DFAF) were tested, with two of each type operated at 25C, and the other two at 35C. The first stage of the experiment explored using the high–rate digesters on liquid effluent from a screw–press treating dairy manure slurry. The first–stage experiment demonstrated that settling processes, rather than biodegradation, accounted for most of the organic matter reduction in both reactor types, when operated at a 0.5–d hydraulic retention time. Specifically, …