Friday, March 29, 2024

Less liquid and fewer odours

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Tauranga-based tank company Kliptank specialises in above-ground tanks and has covered three with polypropylene mats for farmers in higher rainfall areas. North Island sales consultant David Parker said the cover reduced the liquid volume in the tank dramatically in areas where rainfall reached more than 1200mm a year.
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“It brings the storage volume down so much that it covers the cost of the cover, plus some in some cases. So it makes sense. They don’t have the expense of pumping all that extra water.”

Kliptank uses a modular plastic and aluminium design to encase a liner made from the same material as the cover and it provides a 20-year warranty on the liner. Covering the effluent created an anaerobic process that dealt with odour issues, which Parker said was an issue dairy farmers would have to address in the future. A tank with the capacity to store a million litres of effluent cost about $70,000 once installed, with many of them placed on ground too challenging to dig out for a pond.

“We’re putting them on peat and marine clay which are a challenge and you can’t go inground, so an above-ground tank is the only way to go.”

Te Kuiti farmer Bill Symonds, who milks 400 cows on 135ha next to State Highway 3, decided on a Kliptank and covered it with a polypropylene mat, believing it was a good option where there were houses or main highways nearby.

“There are discharge points for the gas and we can take the gas away from the tank in pipes and burn it off if we need to in the future,” he said.

A Kliptank was the most cost-effective effluent storage for Taupiri farmer Neil Mirfin who built a 404,000 litre tank on a 0.5 metre clay pad. He milks 220 cows on 83ha.

It was one of the earliest tanks to be trialled on peat soil and he deliberately filled it up during the first summer to test the weight. But it had moved only millimetres so far, he said, and any problems would be simple to rectify.

“If it tips one way or another it would be easy to collapse, level it up with sand and put it back up again.”

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