Via company visits to operational installations, livestock farmers have the opportunity to become acquainted with two different market-ready techniques, namely stripping/scrubbing and membrane technology, with additional attention to the post-polishing of the effluent (via constructed wetlands or membrane technology). A calculation tool is being developed to check the financial feasibility of these techniques for individual livestock farmers. In addition, livestock farmers, arable farmers and vegetable growers are convinced of the added value of the end products of these techniques for the cultivation of (forage) crops and vegetables through field trials and extensive product analyses. Alternative sales routes for the end products are also being sought. Finally, an environmental impact analysis is performed, so that the environmental impact of these new techniques can be compared with current manure processing techniques.

Via a sounding board group, which meets at regular intervals during the duration of the project (1/12/2019 – 30/11/2022), the bottlenecks that currently prevent the transition from manure processing to a circular economy are tackled. These bottlenecks, which are addressed within NITROMAN, include:

• the technological further development from pilot to full-scale installations;
• the economic feasibility of the techniques, which is not always obvious;
• the sale of the products that is not going as it should, among other things because the wishes of the end users are not yet clear;
• the public capacity;
• the legislation that for the time being is not always consistent with the transition to circular manure processing.

All interested representatives from the agricultural sector (including dairy industry, animal feed industry, fertilizer industry), arable farmers, livestock farmers, vegetable growers, agricultural organizations and the policy makers involved, as well as manufacturers of nutrient recovery techniques, can join the sounding board group, also during the duration of the project. In addition to the designers who are partners in the project, other interested designers can therefore also benefit from the discussions of the sounding board group and the results of NITROMAN. Of course, no company information is exchanged. Via the NITROMAN website (www.nitroman.be) you can register for the sounding board group, so that you are always informed about the project and planned meetings of the sounding board group.

More information about the project can be found at www.nitroman.be and on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NITROMANproject).

Nitroman is financed within the Interreg V program Flanders-Netherlands, the cross-border cooperation program with financial support from the European Regional Development Fund. More info: www.grensregio.eu.