CHEMICAL AND SPECTROSCOPIC CHARACTERIZATION OF COLLOIDAL FRACTIONS SEPARATED FROM LIQUID HOG MANURES

Direct-land application of liquid hog manure is the most common practi ce for recycling this type of waste. However, liquid hog manure not on ly contains valuable agronomic substances, it also includes substances that may pose serious environmental concerns. Pyrolysis-Field Ionizat ion Mass Spectrometry (Pp-FIMS), C-13 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (C-13 NMR), and Fourier-Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) were spectroscopy method s used to characterize colloidal fractions separated from three liquid hog manures. The spectroscopic data revealed that the colloids in the liquid manures contain relatively high concentrations of sterols (bet ween 10.1 and 12.7% of Total Ion Intensity (TII)), which may have orig inated from animals and plants as well as from fortified feeds. Other significant colloid components, as percentages of TII, are lipids (5.3 to 11.9%), free fatty acids (3.4 to 9.5%), carbohydrates (2.5 to 6.0% ), peptides (3.5 to 4.9%), n-alkylaromatics (2.9 to 4.0% C), N-compoun ds (3.1 to 4.7%), and phenols (2.5 to 4.0%). The presence of relativel y high concentrations of sterols and phenols indicate that liquid hog manure has a high propensity for contributing to the contamination of soils and surface and subsurface waters.