The present invention relates to an animal-rearing installation.
The indoor rearing of animals, and particularly of hogs, requires specific installations: specifically the wastes produced by these animals must be washed away regularly to allow them to grow in correct sanitary conditions.
Document FR 2 650 152 teaches of an animal-rearing installation, comprising an animal standing zone, means for violently flushing a cleaning fluid into said zone in order to wash this zone and, situated at the other end from said flushing means relative to said zone, a channel for collecting the mixture formed by said cleaning fluid and the wastes flushed by this fluid.
In this type of installation, the flushing of the cleaning fluid makes it possible to carry away the wastes accumulated in the animal standing zone.
The cleaning fluid may be of various types: it may be water, or else wastes that have undergone a (biological and/or chemical and/or physical) treatment, or else a mixture of these two fluids.
If the animals are hogs, for example, slurry flushed from the standing zone may be collected in settlement tanks and it is then the liquid fraction of the decanted slurry that may be used to flush the standing zones.
In this type of installation, powerful pumping means must be used to obtain a flow making it possible to correctly wash the standing zones, which requires a considerable initial investment and, subsequently, is extremely costly in maintenance and consumption of electricity.
The main objectives of the present invention are to:
This object of the invention is achieved with an animal-rearing installation according to claim 1 attached hereto.
Thanks to the features of this installation, the bucket tips solely under the effect of the movement of its center of gravity during its filling, this tipping having the effect of sending a flow of cleaning fluid that is both very high and very violent into the animal standing zone, which makes it possible to flush a good proportion of the animal wastes that have fallen in this zone.
A weak flow of fluid is sufficient to fill the bucket, so that it is not necessary to use costly pumping means. The tipping of the bucket also requires no particular mechanism, so that the installation according to the invention is extremely simple and not very costly in initial investment, in maintenance and in consumption of electricity.
It is therefore possible to wash the animal standing zones simply, regularly and at low cost without having recourse to extraction of the ammonia to the atmosphere.
According to another optional feature of the installation according to the invention, said bucket comprises a trough arranged so that, when its level of filling with said cleaning fluid has reached a predetermined threshold, the center of gravity of the assembly formed by said substantially empty bucket and said trough thus filled moves to a point such that said bucket tips from said flushing position to said filling position, so as to refill with said cleaning fluid.
Thanks to this trough, it is possible to return the bucket to its initial position solely under the effect of the flow of cleaning fluid: here again, no specific actuation mechanism is necessary.
According to another optional feature of the invention, said bucket has a substantially asymmetric trapezoidal profile.
This trapezoidal shape is extremely simple to manufacture, and makes it easy to obtain the abovementioned function of moving the center of gravity gradually as the bucket fills.
According to other optional features of the installation according to the invention:
Other features and advantages of the present invention will appear in the light of the following description and on examination of the appended drawings in which:
Reference is now made to
Outside the bearing walls 9a, 9b of the building, and associated respectively with each of the rooms 1a to if, there are buckets 11a to 11f of elongated shape into which ducts 13a to 13d open, furnished at their ends with valves 15a to 15d.
As can be seen in
Reference is now made to
More precisely, the mouth 17 and the bottom 19 of the bucket are parallel with one another, the surface area of the mouth 17 being markedly greater than that of the bottom 19, and one wall 21 of the two inclined walls of the bucket has a surface area greater than the other wall 22.
The bucket 11 is mounted so as to pivot about an axis A situated in the vicinity of the ridge situated between the bottom 19 and the inclined wall 21.
Furthermore, the bucket 11 comprises, attached to the outside and in the upper portion of the inclined wall of lesser surface area 22, a trough 23 defined by a bottom 25 and two end panels 27a, 27b, this trough extending preferably over practically the whole length of the bucket 11.
In the variant represented in
In the variant shown in
It will be noted that, in this second variant, the bottom 25 of the trough 23 is provided with an orifice 29 situated in the vicinity of the wall 22 of the bucket 11.
Reference is now made to
Under the gratings 31a, 31b there are pits 35a, 35b whose bottom 36a, 36b, preferably made of concrete, has a slight slope (for example 1 cm per 1 m) in the direction of the corridor 5.
Beneath the grating 33 of the corridor 5 there is a channel 37 extending over the whole length of the corridor 5, and whose bottom is also preferably made of concrete.
Preferably, as is shown, trap devices 39a, 39b are placed in the zones where the pits 35a, 35b open into the channel 37, so as to prevent gaseous interchanges between the corridor 5 and these pits.
In the embodiment represented in
Reference is now made to
As can be seen in this figure, each bucket 11 may be placed in fluid communication with the channel 37 by means of the associated pit 35.
Appropriate pipes 43 connect the outlet of the channel 37 to a recycling installation 45.
It should be understood that in the context of the present invention, the term “recycling” is a generic term that covers any method of treating the effluent collected at the outlet of the channel 37.
These treatment methods may be of the biological type (a bacteriological reactor for example), of the chemical type, or else of the physical type.
In the embodiment of
Low flow rate (typically of the order of 2 m3 per hour) pumping means make it possible to send the liquid fraction 47 that is in the tank 45 into the pipes 13 that open into each trough 11.
Now to understand how the installation according to the invention operates, reference will be made below to
In these figures, a single bucket 11 has been shown, but it goes without saying that all the buckets of the installation operate according to the same principle as that which will be explained below.
This place is preferably closed in its upper portion by a removable cover 55, and the bottom 57 of this place is situated in the extension of the bottom 36 of the pit 35, and has a slope at least equal to that of the latter.
It can be seen that the larger inclined wall 21 of the bucket 11 is preferably situated at the end away from the pit 35.
Beginning with the situation shown in
The pump 51 is started and the valve 15 (see
As a result, the bucket 11 fills with fluid, which, because of the asymmetry of this bucket, tends to move the center of gravity of the assembly formed by this bucket and the fluid in the direction of the larger inclined wall 21, as is symbolized by the arrow F shown in
Therefore, when the filling level of fluid reaches a predetermined threshold S situated in the vicinity of the upper edge of this bucket, the bucket 11 tips violently about its pivoting axis A, as is shown in
The flow rate of fluid thus flushed is extremely high, typically of the order of 35000 m3 per hour for a bucket having a volume of the order of 9 m3, suitable for a room 1 with a length (between the wall 9 and the channel 37) of approximately 20 m.
The fluid flush, symbolized by the arrows C of
This waste is therefore carried in the channel 37, then to the recycling device 45.
Once the bucket 11 has been tipped in the conditions described above, the trough 23 is in line with the pipe 13.
The fluid continuing to flow in this pipe progressively fills this trough until the moment when the weight of the fluid is sufficient to apply a torque to the empty bucket returning it to its initial filling position as shown in
At the time of this return, the fluid that was inside the trough 23 is spilled (see arrow D in
So long as the fluid is allowed to flow inside the pipe 13, the steps that have just been described are repeated in a cyclical manner.
For example, when the flow rate in the pipe 13 is of the order of 2 m3 per hour and the volume of the bucket 11 is of the order of 9 m3, the flush of fluid inside the pit 35 occurs approximately every four hours.
It will be noted that, if the trough 23 is according to the variant shown in
The orifice 29 provided in the bottom 25 of the trough 23 makes it possible, in this variant, to ensure that the trough ends by emptying completely while the bucket 11 fills.
As can be understood in the light of the foregoing, the installation according to the invention makes it possible to generate, at regular time intervals, a very high flow rate of cleaning fluid for a pit of a livestock-rearing building.
This high flow rate makes it possible to clear away a good portion of the animal wastes that accumulate in the bottom of the pit, and therefore reduce the ammonia emissions that are harmful to the animals and the bacterial risks.
It is no longer necessary to ventilate the livestock-rearing building to clear away the ammonia emissions, which makes it possible to keep the animals at a sufficiently high temperature (particularly in winter) without it being necessary to use heating means.
It will be noted for this reason that the trap means 39a, 39b shown in
The installation according to the present invention requires no expensive pumping means, and no particular actuation mechanism.
This installation, of very simple and very reliable design, is not very costly to install and maintain, and consumes relatively little electricity.
Naturally, the present invention is not limited to the embodiment described and shown, provided as an illustrative and nonlimiting example.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
05 05590 | Jun 2005 | FR | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
---|---|---|---|---|
PCT/FR2006/001227 | 5/30/2006 | WO | 00 | 11/26/2007 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
WO2006/129009 | 12/7/2006 | WO | A |
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1449661 | Forsythe | Mar 1923 | A |
2070089 | De Lacy-Mulhall | Feb 1937 | A |
2202452 | Hildabrand | May 1940 | A |
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6210287 | Briggs | Apr 2001 | B1 |
6470828 | Townsend et al. | Oct 2002 | B1 |
6531057 | Houle | Mar 2003 | B1 |
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1 193 301 | May 1965 | DE |
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2781119 | Jan 2000 | FR |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20090101073 A1 | Apr 2009 | US |