New ventilation tool available for manure pit designers</

May 26, 2016

Online tool can help create safer environments

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

Farmers planning on having manure storage pits constructed may benefit from pointing builders and engineers to a new online tool that can help create safer environments.

The Confined-Space Manure Ventilation Design Tool was created by researchers at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and is designed to help engineers, farmers and safety authorities determine how long a confined manure storage space needs to be ventilated for to remove toxic and asphyxiating gases.

Many storage pits contain hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia, and some statistics show as many as 10 people die annually in North American animal-manure pits.

Penn State tool

After users enter barn design, dimensions, manure storage size and ventilation configuration into the online tool, it generates customized information about the concentrations of any toxic gases.

The online tool is the end result of decade-long research by members of different organizations including Penn State’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering; they say the tool is made for users of all levels.

"You don't have to be a computational fluid design or computer assisted design expert to use the online design tool. Results include contaminant gas decay curves, real-time animations of gas decay and ventilation time required to reduce contaminate gas and replenish oxygen to acceptable levels for human entry," said Dan Hofstetter, a research assistant in agricultural and biological engineering who helped develop parts of the online tool.

Video: LALEXPERT: Sclerotinia cycle and prophylactic methods

White rot, also known as sclerotinia, is a common agricultural fungal disease caused by various virulent species of Sclerotinia. It initially affects the root system (mycelium) before spreading to the aerial parts through the dissemination of spores.

Sclerotinia is undoubtedly a disease of major economic importance, and very damaging in the event of a heavy attack.

All these attacks come from the primary inoculum stored in the soil: sclerotia. These forms of resistance can survive in the soil for over 10 years, maintaining constant contamination of susceptible host crops, causing symptoms on the crop and replenishing the soil inoculum with new sclerotia.