Poultry farming: odor abatement

Smelly emissions on farms are clearly linked to the presence of animals and their excrement.
Fortunately, more and more often, systems are being adopted to guarantee better living and growth conditions for animals, such as greater space for freedom of movement, more light, adequate time for growth without forcing food and daily checks in all phases of growth.
However, the problem of odorous emissions remains, which very often needs to be addressed.

This is also the case of our client who has a large poultry farm in Northern Italy, who contacted us due to a problem of bad odors developing inside the three sheds where the chickens are housed. The odors spread into the external environment through the openings in the plant, causing nuisance to the companies and inhabitants of the surrounding area.

Our technicians carried out a thorough inspection considering:

• sizes of the surfaces involved
• olfactometric samples (according to the UNI EN 13725: 2022 standard)
• analysis of odor emissions. 

To reduce unpleasant odors, in this case it was considered to treat the air leaving the factories using osmogenic barrier technology.
This is an excellent solution, especially when it is necessary to intervene on a non-dangerous but annoying emission.
In the livestock sector this condition is recurrent, as we have also explained in this article, and this is why more complex and expensive abatement technologies are usually not taken into consideration. 

Our technicians have therefore developed a customized project based on the specific emission criticality of the customer.

The three sheds for housing the chickens had similar structural and plant characteristics.

We therefore decided to use the same technology: osmogenic spray barriers, but to intervene gradually starting with the first shed.

We started by planning an intervention on all the openings that allowed the dispersion of odors outside the warehouse.

We have decided to install a variable flow and constant pressure system capable of treating fans and dampers, called HPS Midi Var.

This system sends an appropriately diluted formulation of water and deodorizing products, passing inside a polyamide pipe, to nebulizing nozzles fixed on the fans and dampers.

Each line is controlled by an external consent (opening and closing photocells) which allows you to start the system and activate the relevant solenoid valve. When all the lines are at rest, the system turns off automatically, always reactivating automatically at the first request coming from any line.

In this specific case, we have installed: 

• 400 meters of line
• 128 misting nozzles for each side (48 divided on the fans and 16 on the shutters that open and close). 

The activation of the fans follows a linear trend from the center towards the sides.
The first fans to come into operation are those towards the center of the shed and those towards the outside gradually turn on.
The lines have the same arrangement, the first is concentrated in the center and the others progressively towards the sides. 

Given the results obtained, the customer decided to adopt the same technology and equipment for the other two warehouses.

The peculiarity of this system is that it is designed to provide a variable flow rate at a constant pressure allowing it to serve multiple lines of independent nozzles.

Thanks to an optional management panel that allows you to start the system and activate the relevant solenoid valve, each line can be controlled by an external consent. 

Depending on the activated lines, the system delivers the necessary water flow while always maintaining constant pressure on the line.
The self-regulation of the flow rate and the maintenance of the pressure take place via a pressure transducer which communicates with the inverter of the electric motor.

By changing the flow rate of the pump it is possible to power a minimum of 16 and a maximum of 88 nozzles.

The system can be equipped with some options: 

• electrical panel for managing solenoid valves; 
• automatic dosing group; 
• heating cable; 
• water softener system for mains water; 
• pressurization group.

For the systems of this poultry farm we used LT Air Cover, a concentrated liquid product without perfumed tracer. 

The advantages of this product are: 

• high deodorizing performance 
• does not release chemicals into the environment
• does not use substances that produce secondary products
•  the components present do not oxidize and do not alter in the air
•  there are no perfumed notes so as to eliminate the risk of interfering synergistic odors.

Through the use of our odor abatement systems, the customer found a significant improvement in odor problems and there were no more complaints from the neighbourhood. 

We periodically take care of the maintenance of the systems for them and recently they also asked us to install a new system following an expansion of one of the sheds where the chickens are kept.