Evaluating wood ash for phosphorus removal from livestock manure

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Louisiana Pacific (LP) is a building products company that has operated an oriented strand board plant in Manitoba since 1996 using local poplar logs to make construction sheeting. The plant burns wood, waste bark and sawdust for drying the board before shipping to local and international markets. Wood ash produced from this process is a waste product and currently a portion of the material is applied to farmland with the rest trucked to the local landfill. Wood ash is strongly alkaline, and as an agricultural supplement it is only appropriate when soil pH is 6.5 or lower (<25% of Manitoba farmland). Addition of a highly alklaine ash makes soil nutrients less available to growing plants, thus the LP plant has limited and seasonal demand for ash as a soil amendment. From a perspective of nutrient sustainability and waste utilization, LP would like to find a regular market for its steady supply of wood ash.