Bioengineering and Environmental Engineering Current developments in air pollution prevention

With the amendment of the NEC Directive the ammonia emissions in Germany will have to be reduced by 29% to 482 kilotons by the year 2030, and fine particulate emissions (PM 2.5) even shall be reduced by 43%. Agriculture is the major emission source for ammonia. Here more emission-reducing and mitigating procedures have to be used in the future. The ex-haust air purification makes an important contribution to this. Though, in its current form it cannot be used on large scale for smaller sheds at least because of economic reasons. Therefore, alternative methods with similarly high reduction efficiencies are required. Here, adapted exhaust air purification with recirculating air cleaners and the liquid manure treat-ment are particularly promising. The future focus should also be on cattle since cattle farming produces a large proportion of gaseous emissions (including methane), and so far there are very few emissions data and, above all, hardly any technical solutions for emission reduction.