Overview of Methods to Reduce Odorant Emissions from Confinement Swine Buildings

Odors are emitted from a variety of sources in swine production facilities. A large quantity of odorants can be emitted from manure handling and storage facilities. However, swine production buildings can also emit significant levels of odorants. This is especially true if manure is held within the buildings for periods exceeding 4-5 days. Manure also sticks to floors, walls, equipment, and pigs. Feed is often spilled in areas where pigs don’t clean it up. This manure and feed can be around for several days or weeks and release highly objectionable odorants if these organic materials break down under anaerobic conditions. The amount of surface area of these odorant sources can be large and lead to high emissions of odorous gases. To further complicate matters, swine buildings usually have high concentrations of dust in the air and odorants adhere to the dust so the dust can also carry odors out of the buildings (Hoff et al., 1997a).