Greenpark Dairy farm is located 7km southeast of Lincoln on the Canterbury Plains, and 3.3km north of Lake Ellesmere.

Milking 540 cows through a 40-bale herringbone shed with a backing gate circular yard wash, the dairy produces an average volume of 14,500 L FDE/day. With an envirosaucer of 22,000L usable volume and an above ground Kliptank of 558,000L usable volume. Existing storage equates to 40 milking day’s storage.

A ClearTech effluent treatment system was installed September 2019 to reduce the volume of effluent to be managed and therefore reduce the risk associated with irrigating at high-risk times.

ClearTech recycles approximately 66% of the volume of FDE produced as yard wash down water which:

• Reduced volume of FDE by 66%
• Increased storage volume from 40 to 116 milking days
• Allowed greater flexibility in when to irrigate with increased storage capacity
• Delayed FDE irrigation start date into spring to allow for less demands around calving
• Reduced fresh water consumption

We take a snapshot of this unit today and what it has achieved for Farm Owner Tom Mason over the past nearly 3 seasons.

With an average of approximately 14,500L FDE/day, this requires a full tank (approx. 1x cycle) to be processed every 2/days.

Process cycle data:

• Completed 760 cycles
• Ave fresh water per cycle 15,900L
• Total fresh water saving is a massive 12,084,000 litres (recycled) for yard washdown

Reducing the Volume of FDE to pump from the kliptank by approximately 3,000 cubic metres per year, this creates labour savings on irrigation runs and the cost of pumping hours per year.

Breakthrough science in Methane reduction

In testing the ClearTech system for unintended consequences we found that the gases we collected off the treated effluent in experimental set-ups indicated a reduction in methane emissions of greater than 90%.

Further developed by scientists at Lincoln University and fertiliser co-operative Ravensdown, a new system, EcoPond, was developed to help farmers achieve close to half of the Government’s 2030 target of cutting biogenic methane emissions from livestock by 10% from the 2017 levels.

Similar to ClearTech, without the recycling of water, the EcoPond system achieves its highly significant reductions in methane emissions by adding the treatment agent iron sulphate. A safe additive used in the treatment of drinking water, iron sulphate is added as to FDE as it travels from the dairy shed to the storage ponds or tanks.

With the same additive being used in ClearTech, Greenpark Dairies can now benefit from the methane emission reduction from their ClearTech unit knowing that by supporting this technology it is helping the NZ Dairy Industry meet those targets.

To find out more about ClearTech or EcoPond, get in touch with your Ravensdown agri manager or call us on 0800 100 123.