A REVIEW OF THE CONTROL OF ODOR NUISANCE FROM LIVESTOCK BUILDINGS .2. THE COSTS OF ODOR ABATEMENT SYSTEMS AS PREDICTED FROM VENTILATION REQUIREMENTS

Livestock buildings require ventilation for the removal not only of heat, but also of aerial contaminants. Exhausted air thus carries odorous components to the surroundings. In this review the costs of odour abatement systems to reduce odour nuisance from livestock buildings have been predicted from the maximum ventilation requirements of the buildings. Twelve odour abatement systems have been considered, but of these only those which are judged to be effective (seven) have been costed. The seven effective systems include chemical or biological treatments of air leaving the building, or natural dilution of odorants in the atmosphere. Since these methods depend on forced ventilation within a building, the costs include installation of both ventilation equipment and treatment plant to meet the maximum requirement for typical buildings. The analysis was undertaken not only to provide cost predictions but also to allow them to be compared. Chemical treatments were found to be prohibitively expensive. Biological treatments and chimneys, although much cheaper, still carried a large overhead per animal. The cheapest treatment was found to be a biofilter (£8 per pig or £0·18 per broiler in the examples considered), in terms of both capital and annual costs. For the example of biofilter, capital and annual costs per unit of ventilation demand were £0·52/(m3h-1) and £0·14/(m3h-1) respectively. © 1992 Silsoe Research Institute.