STM: A software tool for predicting daily temperature in stored animal slurry

Abstract

Animal slurry (liquid manure) is a significant source of air pollution. Because the biological and chemical processes that drive emission are sensitive to temperature, there is a need for simple tools that can be used to predict the temperature of stored animal slurry for both emissions inventories and research. In this contribution we describe a heat transfer model and an open-source software implementation that addresses these limitations. The model is a simple mechanistic representation of the slurry-environment system, and the software includes a default parameter set developed from a combination of theory and fitting to measurements made at three concrete tanks in Sweden, and evaluated using measurements from two additional tanks. This contribution describes the model and software program and presents examples.

Keywords

• Animal manure
• Manure management
• Heat transfer model
• Storage lagoon
• Storage tank