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Measuring Odor Plumes in Two Swine Farrowing Operations

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Paper number  054042,  2005 ASAE Annual Meeting . (doi: 10.13031/2013.19479) @2005
Authors:   X.J. Zhou, Q. Zhang, H. Guo, Y.X. Li
Keywords:   Livestock, Odor, Dispersion, Human assessor, Field sniffing

Instantaneous downwind odor plumes on two farrowing farms were quantified by 15 trained human sniffers using an 8-point n-butanol scale. The two farms had similar design and management practices but different manure storage systems: Farm A had a NPC (negative pressure covered) two-cell earthen manure storage and farm B had a open single cell earthen storage. For each measurement session, the 15 sniffers were placed in a grid system at 100m, 500m, and 1000m downwind from the facility with the assistance of GPS positioning systems. Each sniffer took 60 10- second sniffs within a 10-minute period and repeated three times within one hour. Odor emission rates from the source and weather conditions were measured simultaneously with the field sniffing. It was observed that downwind odor on farm A was generally less strong than that on farm B at distance within 500m, but at 1000m, the difference in downwind odor intensity between the two farms was not significant. In addition, three commonly used dispersion models (ISCST3, AUSPLUME, and IN-PUFF2) were evaluated against field measurement. The percentage of agreement was relatively low for downwind distance of 100 m for all three models, but all three models predicted odor well at 500 and 1000 m.

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