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This paper describes a protocol for the evaluation of solids separation technology for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program. Verification activities for solids separation technologies shall be conducted under the ETV Water Quality Protection Center, which is overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and NSF International (NSF), with technical assistance and oversight from North Carolina State University (NCSU).

EPA instituted the ETV Program to verify the performance characteristics of commercial-ready environmental technologies through the evaluation of objective and quality-assured data. The general test plan described here is designed to determine the effectiveness of a solid separation device in separating solids from liquid swine waste from the NCSU farm with between approximately 0.5% and 1.0% total solids over a period of four weeks. The verification process is therefore limited in scope to waste from a specific farm and of limited solids content. While the four week verification period allows observation of some operational problems, it is expected that not all maintenance problems will manifest themselves. Within these limits, the verification process provides a means to evaluate various solid separation systems under similar conditions.

Although the primary purpose of solid separators is to remove and recover solid material, the implementation of these systems will have an impact on the entire waste management system. It is therefore necessary to quantify the effect this equipment has on the partitioning of other waste constituents of interest such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, copper, and zinc. Technical professionals will need this information to determine the value of the separated material as well as to design subsequent waste treatment and land application operations.

The overriding principle of this test is an accounting of the mass of each waste stream and its constituents. The critical requirement is measurement of both volume and concentration for each component of interest. Therefore, tests will be run using a fixed volume of wastewater from a mixing tank. In this way, the partitioning of the constituents between the liquid and solid phases can be determined. Twelve samples will be collected over a four-week period.