Scientists in Scotland have made a major breakthrough in the battle to defeat one of the world’s most deadly pollutants.

Poisonous gas, produced by pig, cow and chicken farms, is the biggest contributor to deaths linked with air pollution in Europe, according to a recent Dutch study.

In Holland, the slurry from the animals has been responsible for a crisis in manure management which has forced the authorities into culling 200,000 cows this year.

Researchers there have identified ammonia emissions from animal excrement as the major cause of airborne heart and lung disease.

In addition to seriously polluting the atmosphere, the faeces and urine from dairy cows provide a constant poisonous threat to rivers and streams in and around farmland.

In the UK and Ireland each year thousands of fish die when slurry escapes into waterways.

Now, a team of scientists based in Aberdeen are about to unveil an environmentally-friendly solution which will eradicate the world’s slurry problems once and for all.

SEM Energy Group, in conjunction with ENREN Technologies, have developed a mobile unit which scoops in the slurry and processes it down into healthy drinking water and premium-grade organic fertiliser.

They are hosting a demonstration of their invention, which they named H2OPE, at a farm near Stirling next month which will be attended by interested parties from around the world.

A company spokesman said: “The system can process around 20 tons an hour and there is zero waste.

“We can take it wherever the farmers want it to be. It is a one-man operation and we can leave it at the location until all the slurry is processed.

“We believe there is a huge demand for our product in almost every European country, as well as Turkey, India, China and the USA.

“These countries are facing the greatest environmental and health dangers, as a consequence of slurry.

“Holland, in particular, is experiencing massive pollution problems because much of the land is below sea water and the slurry is entering the water table almost at will.

“The pharmaceutical-grade water we produce can be fed back into the polluted rivers and streams as part of the clean-up process.

“In addition, the fertiliser our system generates can be used by farmers to offset the cost of hiring our equipment.

“We believe that Dutch farmers, for example, who currently import over 300 million Euros worth of fertiliser annually, could become net exporters with our system.”