Manure can become a source of environmental contamination (soil, water sources) due to the pathogens of infectious diseases of farm animals. There are many different methods of disinfecting such manure. One of them is anaerobic digestion, which takes place in biogas plants. While this method is effective, there was a question about whether the quality of the manure stays intact after disinfection. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the viability of pig parasite eggs (Ascaris suum Goeze, 1782) during the treatment of pig manure at 37 °C under anaerobic digestion.
The results of our research showed that this temperature regime of anaerobic digestion is an effective method of parasite control. However, there is a need for improvement due to only about 8% of the helminth eggs remaining alive after a one-day stay, about 50% after a week’s stay, and about 9% in the third week of stay in the biogas reactor. Thus, under one of the most common fermentation regimes, not all parasites die. Some of them, together with organic fertilizers formed in the biogas reactor, can end up in the soil of agricultural land and cause infection of animals and humans. Therefore, it is very important to develop an effective fermentation regime that will kill all helminths.
It is proposed to recommend further optimization of anaerobic mesophilic digestion settings with substrate pretreatment to suppress helminth egg viability. It is perhaps necessary to further adapt existing methods of organic waste decontamination such as low absorbed radiation dose, high temperature in the biogas reactor, the addition of calcium hydroxide and other regulators of the medium acidity, etc.
We are thankful to the Czech government support provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, which allowed this scientific cooperation to begin within the project “Empowering the Future of AgriSciences in Ukraine: AgriSci-UA”.
Keywords: Ascaris suum, eggs, disinfection, anaerobic digestion, fermentation, biogas reactor.
Citation: BoykoO.; Brygadyrenko V.; Chernysh Y.; Chubur V.; and Roubík H. Possibilities of decontaminating organic waste from swine-farming complexes using anaerobic digestion. Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-024-05914-6
