PhD candidate Abdolhossein Edalati wins graduate poster award from ASABE

PhD candiate Abdolhossein Edalati won the first graduate student poster prize last Wednesday at ASABE CA-NV Meeting in Tulare.  The poster's title is "The Effects of Solid-Liquid Separation on the Mitigation of Methane Emissions from Dairy Manure Lagoons".

This work is part of ongoing research conducted by the lab of Professor Ruihong Zhang in the Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering at UC Davis, and is made possible by funding from the CDFA (grant#15-0610-SA). It's primary goal is to quantify the affect that different solid-liquid separation systems on CA Dairies have on the mitigation of methane emissions from long-term manure storage lagoons on the farms.

The Dairy Industry represents the largest financial player in CA's Agricultural sector, bringing in $6.23bn out of a total of $47.1bn in 2015. However, dairies are also California's largest agriculture contributor to greenhouse gas emissions at about 4.8% of total GHG emissions, and the 80% of dairy manure that ends up in lagoons contributes approximately 25% of all CH4 emissions in the state.

Solid-liquid separation technologies can reduce methane emissions from dairy lagoons by reducing the loading of volatile solids, which are otherwise converted to CH4 by methanogens under the anaerobic conditions. Examples of such technologies include mechanical separators, settling basins, and weeping walls. The objectives of this research were to: 1) evaluate the efficiency of different solid-liquid separation technologies on California dairies; and 2) quantify their efficacy in the reduction of methane production potential from dairy lagoons. This study is looking at separator systems on six different CA dairies across all four seasons and includes: four mechanical separators, one weeping wall, and one combination roller press and settling tank system.

This poster, which won first place out of seven posters in the graduate student poster competition at the 2018 annual ASABE CA-NV Section meeting, includes background about the study, a description of the manure management practice on each farm, and data from 3 farms during the Summer and Fall seasons.