Crystal Peak Technology is being used by Premium Standard Farms® for their Valley View Farm in Sullivan County, Missouri. The plant will produce 8,600 tons per year of 12-8-8 granulated fertilizer.

Raw hog manure is concentrated from 14 eight barn sites and acid stabilized. The solids are pumped to an anaerobic digester. This innovative process converts hog manure into a high value commercial fertilizer, eliminating the problems with traditional anaerobic lagoon processing and provides its own energy for fertilizer drying.

Anaerobic digestion will take place in a synthetically lined basin with a bio-gas collection system. The bio gas is collected and used for heat in the drying/pelletizing system. The digested slurry is pumped to a liquid/solid separation circuit used to produce a wet centrifuge cake and clarified liquor. The clarified liquor is stabilized and pumped to a Freeze/Thaw Evaporation (FTE) system.

The FTE system consists of a converted existing lagoon to store the brine until freezing weather conditions occur. The brine is then pumped to a ten acre FT field where the liquid separation occurs. A stronger concentration of nutrients is created as well as a clean water fraction. The concentrate is either further concentrated through the smaller three acre ice field or is sent to be mixed with the centrifuge cake product and granulated into a fertilizer pellet in a proprietary granulation plant. The finished product is temporarily stored on site and then transported off site and sold into the wholesale market.

The clean water, with a large percentage of the nitrogen removed, is either re-fed to the animals or irrigated on the surrounding fields through the existing underground force main system.

Click here to see a large annotated diagram of the process.