Analysis of the reactive nitrogen (Nr) balance as a tool for assessing the performance of air scrubbers at livestock facilities

The environmental impact from livestock production is one of the main problems of this sector. Local and international regulations have been defined to reduce the environmental load of livestock farms. There are several techniques available aimed to the abatement of airborne emissions in farms. Among these techniques end-of-the-pipe approaches, such as air scrubbers, have turned into off-the-shelf techniques in Northern European countries such as The Netherlands. From the model calculations it follows that both balance methods are accurate, i.e. the systematic errors are very small. However, the air-based balance yields a considerably higher precision (i.e. the random error is small) than the combined balance. This difference in precision level depends on the removal efficiency and the applied ammonia measurement method