U.S. flagAn official website of the United States government
                    Here's how you know **Official websites use .gov**
                            
                            A **.gov** website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
 **Secure .gov websites use HTTPS**
                            
                            A **lock** (                            
                              A locked padlock                                                      
                            
                            ) or **https://** means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Menu Agricultural Research Service
						
                    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
 close



Research
                Research Home
                            National Programs
                            Research Projects
                            Scientific Manuscripts
                            International Engagement
                            Scientific Software/Models
                            Databases and Datasets
                            Office of Scientific Quality Review
            Media
                News & Features
                            Multimedia
                            Briefing Room
                            Down on the Farm
                            Press Room
                            Science in Your Shopping Cart
                            Scientific Discoveries
                            Tellus
                            Under the Microscope
            About ARS
                About ARS Home
                            Staff Directory
                            Labs and Research Centers (Map)
                            Headquarter Offices
                            Organizational Chart
                            Employee Services (REE Employees Only)
                            Office of Outreach, Diversity, and Equal Opportunity
            Work With Us
                Work With Us Home
                            ARS Vacancies at USAJOBS
                            Careers at ARS Information
                            Scientific Collaborations
                            Extramural Agreements
                            1890 Faculty Research Sabbatical ProgramSearch small
                    Search
            
            ARS Home
                                About ARS
                                Contact Us




ARS Home Office of Communications DOF





- Archive
- Under the Microscope

The Alchemy of Waste: Researchers Transform Animal Byproducts Into Valuable Assets One of the great challenges of raising animals is how to handle their waste. The question is as inevitable as it is difficult, but thanks to creative thinking and persistent lab work, ARS scientists are now offering farmers revolutionary new tools. Their goal: to reduce or eliminate the negative side effects of animal waste, such as excess nutrient run-off, and the release of pathogens or even antimicrobial resistant (AMR) genes. In developing solutions, they are helping to build a more circular agricultural economy, in which farmers can transform waste into valuable products that they can then use on their land in ways that strengthen their operations. The work includes several different projects and builds on research that has been in progress for over 25 years. It began with the insight that bacteria lurking within waste could itself contain solutions. Matias Vanotti, a soil scientist at the Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plant Research Center in Florence, SC, used that insight to begin an intensive screening process — over 450 days long — to isolate a bacteria in waste from swine operations in North Carolina, where there was a significant problem with run-off from farms. His search led him to a bacterial species, *Brocadia caroliniensis*, called anammox, for its ability to perform anaerobic ammonia oxidation, or the transformation of ammonia, a potentially harmful form of nitrogen, into dinitrogen gas under anaerobic conditions. The process proved to be highly effective for water treatment and has implications beyond agriculture, too. An image of red and greeen bacteria. An image of green and red bacteriaConfocal microscope image of bacteria in a bioreactor that removes ammonia from wastewater: Red: anammox*Brocadia caroliniensis*, Green: HPNS (high-performance nitrifiers). (Photos by Marina De Pra, Federal Technological University of Paraná Dois Vizinhos) In the course of the research, Vanotti explained, "we had to lyophilize [freeze dry], or preserve the bacteria for a long time, and that caught the attention of NASA, because they were trying to develop a new system to clean and recycle wastewater in space for long-term missions, like a mission to Mars." The achievement has been described as "a game-changing water purification technology to remove nitrogen from wastewater at one-third the cost of existing technologies." Aerial view of a manure wastewater treatment system.Efficient manure/wastewater treatment system developed to capture nutrients, improve water quality, reduce emissions of ammonia and nuisance odors, enhance water availability for water reuse, and kill harmful pathogens. (Image from "Turning Waste into Power in Rural North Carolina", USDA Rural Development) Vanotti is now moving forward with colleagues to explore additional applications of bacteria, such as using them to treat water so that it can be used to flush barns, to purify water at very low temperatures, or even incorporating the bacteria into anaerobic digestion processes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In all of these efforts, the researchers are keeping the focus on the farmer. "We try to do this in such a way that a farmer can manage without complicated equipment," Vanotti said. Thomas Ducey, a microbiologist at the Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plant Research Center in Florence, SC, has worked on the research with Vanotti. He noted that, while conventional water treatment uses large anaerobic lagoons and takes roughly 180 days, the system they developed can process water in tanks on a farm in 3-4 days. Matias VanottiARS soil scientist Matias Vanotti with a pilot wastewater treatment reactor. (Photo by Fei Dai, Pancopia Inc.) "Treated water in a lagoon is nothing like what comes out of the system that Matias devised," he said. "Lagoon water is still filled with solids, it has high nutrient content, it is unfit for any sort of consumption, and it still has potential pathogens in it. It’s nothing like the active treatment systems that the unit here has devised. It’s night and day." Taken together, the projects could provide farmers with a number of powerful new options to address the effects of animal agriculture, turning an insight about one tiny bacterium into a wealth of important solutions. — by Kathryn Markham, ARS Office of Communications


Return to top


Research
                            Media
                            About ARS
                            Work With Us


Connect with ARS Sign up


ARS Home
                            USDA.gov
                            Plain Writing
                            Policies & Links
                            Civil Rights Statements
                            FOIA
                            Accessibility Statement
                            Privacy Policy
                            Non-Discrimination Statement
                            Quality of Information
                            USA.gov
                            WhiteHouse.gov