<p>The United States has experienced a recent boom in pork production. Associated with this growth has been a shift from traditional small family farm units to large confined housing operations. North Carolina, with 9.5 million swine, has been the leader in the development of large, efficient swine operations and is second only to Iowa in pork production. This change has resulted in production of more swine on less land and an increase in animal waste application to adjoining farm land. The repeated application of swine waste may result in increased accumulation of copper and zinc in soils. There is concern that these two metals, which are added to swine feed, will accumulate to phytotoxic levels in agricultural soils. The objective of the research described in this thesis was to investigate the ability of fungi to remove copper and zinc from swine wastewater. The imperfect fungus Aspergillus niger was found to be the most resistant (of six fungi examined) to copper, and the one best able to remove copper from culture media and swine wastewater. A. niger was able to remove as much as 91% of the copper and 70% of the zinc from hog wastewater collected from an aerobic/anaerobic swine waste treatment facility. Interestingly, the majority of the copper and zinc removed by the fungus was by absorption. Absorption of metal by fungi has not been reported as a useful method for bioremediation. These studies show that A. niger is a promising candidate for the removal of copper and zinc from swine wastewater.<P>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-20000413-153002 |
| Date | 13 April 2000 |
| Creators | Price, Michael Scott |
| Contributors | Gary A. Payne, John J. Classen, Margaret E. Daub |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-20000413-153002 |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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