Dietary Modification for Reducing Electrical Conductivity of Piggery Wastewater

A total of 108 pigs (including 36 starters, 36 growers, and 36 finishers) were randomly allocated to six treatments, which involved a 2 (Crude Protein (CP): 100 and 80% of control diet)${\times}$3 (Ca, P, Salt (CPS): 100, 80 and 60% of control diet) factorial design to evaluate the effectiveness of reducing CP and CPS in reducing wastewater EC in different stages. Another 72 starters were adopted to examine the effect of the six treatment diets (as mentioned above) on the growth performance of pigs. Activated carbon and Reverse Osmosis System (RO) were adopted to examine the reducing efficiency of wastewater EC, and ion analysis was also applied to compare with the wastewater EC in different stages of the metabolism trial. The results of wastewater EC of the six treatment diets in different stages of metabolism trial demonstrated that diminishing dietary CP or CPS decreased wastewater EC. The largest decrease of EC was approximately 30%, and was achieved with 20 and 40% reduced dietary CP and CPS, respectively. Pig growth performance deteriorated somewhat when dietary CP or CPS was diminished. Wastewater ion concentration was not always consistent with dietary CP or CPS content, except for $NO_2^{-}$, $NH_4^{+}$ and $K^{+}$, which were positively correlated with dietary CP or CPS in different stages. Activated carbon is not effective for reducing wastewater EC, while, RO system is effective (90% elimination rate) in reducing wastewater EC, but the EC of concentrated (excreted) water is around 10% higher than that of intact wastewater, representing an additional problem besides the high cost of RO system treatment.