Swiss Agtech company looking for partners to expand to the U.S.
The Swiss agtech company Bluetector has successfully commissioned its first commercial BlueBox plant for manure treatment at a livestock farm in Germany. The compact container-based plant treats 60 tons of pig manure per day and converts it into water on a purely biological basis. Thanks to Bluetector’s BlueBox, up to 350.000 gallons (1.300 cubic meters) of treated water can be applied to a single hectare. The use of Bluetector’s low-cost technology solves the most serious environmental problems in agriculture and enables farmers to greatly reduce the costs of their manure management.
First commercial manure treatment Bluetector in operation.
In limited quantities, manure is a valuable fertilizer. However, there is now so much manure that it has become a serious environmental and health problem worldwide. Bluetector’s plants combine anaerobic and aerobic methods from traditional wastewater treatment with bioaugmentation and targeted anammox processes to achieve an almost complete nitrification and denitrification in the treatment of manure and biogas digestate, without the need of adding any expensive chemicals or carbon sources to maintain the biological processes. The liquid nitrogen contained in the manure is converted into harmless atmospheric nitrogen. The effluent water contains only traces of nitrogen and phosphorus and is therefore ideal for irrigation. Most of the phosphorus remains in the solids as a valuable fertilizer.
Biological processes for manure treatment that have been on the market for some time now, with degradation rates in the nitrogen content of a mere 80 %, may only be used to apply around 26.000 gallons (100 cubic meters) of effluent per hectare. With the new process developed by the Swiss agri-tech company Bluetector, the considerably higher quantity of up to 350.000 gallons (1.300 cubic meters) of effluent per hectare can be deployed. Thanks to manure treatment with a Bluetector system, there is no more need for expensive manure transports where manure sometimes has to be transported over hundreds of miles, or even costly and environmentally unsafe manure storage. The Bluetector technology transforms excess manure into valuable irrigation water, which has become increasingly scarce and expensive in recent years.
Where there are large local manure surpluses, Bluetector’s systems for manure treatment can support the natural nitrogen cycle and convert excess liquid nitrogen into atmospheric nitrogen. This protects the soil and groundwater and avoids expensive and environmentally harmful manure transports.
Purely biological functioning keeps costs low
Bluetector offers turnkey plants for the treatment of manure. Due to the purely biological functionality, the operating costs of Bluetector’s plants are low. The power consumption is less than 15 kWh per ton of hog manure. A livestock Farm with a daily manure quantity of 100 tons can save several hundred thousand USD per year on manure transports and handling costs. Depending on the quantity of manure, a Bluetector system usually pays for itself within 3 years. The more manure is generated, the faster a Bluetector plant will pay for itself.
„We are now looking for partners to bring our groundbreaking and low-cost manure treatment technology to the U.S.“
-David Din, Bluetector
„The commissioning of our first commercial manure treatment plant in Germany is an important milestone for us,“ says David Din, founder and CEO of Bluetector. „Our BlueBox enables livestock farms and Cafos to easily convert their manure into water using our low-cost bioreactor without the need for expensive and maintenance-intensive processes such as evaporation or reverse osmosis. We are now looking for partners to bring our groundbreaking and low-cost manure treatment technology to the U.S.,“ says David Din, founder and CEO of Bluetector. „We want to build our containerized system in the U.S. and grow a nationwide maintenance infrastructure with our partners.“
Thanks to Bluetector’s patent-pending bioaugmentation, the Swiss agri-tech company’s plants for the first time enable purely biological treatment even of fermentation residues from biogas production, without the addition of costly chemicals or carbon sources.
About Bluetector
Bluetector is an agritech company that has developed a novel, low-cost biological treatment process for manure and fermentation residues from biogas production. Bluetector AG is a privately-owned company based in the Technopark Lucerne in Switzerland.
