YieldMax

Patent Pending Chloride Removal System For Agriculture

Overview

YieldMax is a turnkey system that targets the removal of chloride from your irrigation or drainage water. Excess chloride in your irrigation water can damage crops. Our system employs a hybrid approach – using conventional technology to adsorb the chloride and a new proprietary adsorbent to sequester the chloride as a solid. Better still, the system is designed to leave < 100 mg/L of chloride in your irrigation water – a safe amount.

Yield Improvement in Irrigation

Nearly all crops need a small amount of chloride for proper growth. But years of intensive crop cultivation around the world have led to an accumulation of chloride ions in ground and surface water. Until the YieldMax, the only way to remove chloride was via reverse osmosis – energy intensive and incredibly wasteful with our water. YieldMax delivers almost 98% of the treated water to your crops. Without the chloride, your nitrogen fertilizer can go straight to the crop without conflict with the chloride ion.

Better yields and less nitrate required = More money in your pocket with each planting

AG Field Irrigation
AG Field Irrigation with Equipment
Ripe Tomatoes on Vine
Commercial Greenhouse

How Our System Helps You

YieldMax Systems offer a wide range of benefits.

  • Improves Yield & Quality. Lowering the chloride levels can have immediate impact on the yield per acre and also on the quality of the crops.
  • Less Nitrate Use. In some cases, growers must increase nitrate application to overcome the conflict between chloride and nitrate. Remove the chloride and get better nitrate utilization for your crop.
  • Tailored To Your Needs. The systems are designed to remove some or all of the chloride.
  • Small Footprint. The system has a very low residence time (time it takes the water to transit our system) of 4 to 5 minutes.
  • Low Operating Costs. The system uses and recycles ammonium bicarbonate solution to regenerate the ion exchange beds. Pumping requires very low energy as the irrigation water flows down through the beds and out to your crops.
  • Blending Saves Money & Costs. To cut your chloride levels by 50% for example, you would only need to treat 50% of the total irrigation flow. The treated (0 chloride) water can be blended with the untreated irrigation flow.

System Specifications

Flow Rate2-500 GPM
Chloride Removal2 to 100%
Brine Production1-2% of total flow
Regeneration Frequency8–16 hours
Regenerant Solution10% ammonium bicarbonate
pH of Irrigation Water3–9

Note: Other regenerates can be used, instead of ammonium bicarbonate. Let us know your concerns.

How it Works

Front End – Ion Exchange

Similar to a water softener in operation (see figure 1), our ion exchange module adsorbs chloride (and other anions if they are present). The bicarbonate ions are displaced by chloride and the “bicarb” is released into your irrigation water. While this will increase bicarb ions in your irrigation water, the bicarbonate can be easily neutralized by lowering the pH of the treated water using simple addition of an acid.

Back End – Brine Management

Once the ion exchange tanks are close to full of chloride and possibly other anions, the regeneration process starts. We normally schedule this to happen every 12 hours. This time period allows you to process a day’s worth of irrigation sets without stopping. Once the system is halted, irrigation water will bypass the system while the tanks are regenerated. This process takes about 2 hours.

While the system is paused, the regeneration process starts. A 10% ammonium bicarbonate solution, followed by a water rinse, is pumped counter-current into the tanks, replacing the chloride and other anions with bicarbonate ions. The raw brine is collected in the brine processor (see Figure 2).

While your system begins operation again, we further process the stage 1 brine through a second small module that separates the brine into two solutions (see figure 3): a) chloride brine, and b) a nutrient brine containing any other anions that were adsorbed.

You may be able to collect and haul away the chloride brine to your local wastewater treatment plant. If this is not feasible, we can add our adsorbent unit that will bind all of the chloride into a solid. The solid adsorbent is separated from the water/ ammonia solution, allowing all the liquid to be reused.

TWS Staff Members Installing Pumps
 Normal Operation Chart
Figure 1. Normal Operation
Regeneration Process Chart
Figure 2. Regeneration Process
Brine Processing Chart
Figure 3. Brine Processing
TWS Solar Charger Controller

System Components

The system has five major components:

  • Pre-treatment Module
  • Ion Exchange Module
  • Brine Processing Module
  • Optional Chloride Adsorption Module
  • Control & Communications Module

The pre-treatment consists of one or more particulate filters. The ion exchange module
contains:

  • Ion Exchange Resin Tanks
  • Supply Pump

The brine processing module contains the ammonium bicarbonate supply and pump, and a separations module that creates the two smaller brine 2 and brine flows.

The optional chloride adsorption module contains a mixing tank, adsorbent supply, and solid liquid separation unit.

Control and communications of the system is run by an industry standard programmable action controller.

System Design & Configuration

Overview

The design process starts with a standard irrigation suitability report for your irrigation water. This report is used to configure the static and dynamic parameters needed to size and control your system. The report also includes a detailed analysis of the treated water and brine. See figure 4 for an example.

Once we have the design parameters, we can provide you a detailed cost estimate for the system. Additional permits and other site work may be required to integrate our system into your existing irrigation and nutrient control system.

Sample System Design Output
Figure 4. Sample System Design Output

In figure 4, we see that the total flow of 100 GPM has been separated into two streamsa treated stream at 60 GPM and an untreated bypass stream of 40 GPM. Note that this customer will see their chloride, nitrate, and sulfate drop by about 60% as the ion exchange systems adsorbs 60% of the total. As the anions are adsorbed, they will displace bicarbonate ions (HCO3) into your water.

Note: This system design output diagram does not show the effect of our brine processing subsystem (reduces total brine to approximate 1 to 2 percent of total flow.

Optimizing the System Design

We can help you optimize the system design and operational costs for the most cost effective solution. The most important factors for optimization are:

  • The blending strategy to minimize the amount of water to be treated
  • Regeneration time schedule to match your daily irrigation sets
  • Optimize the brine processing to reuse as much of the water and ammonium bicarbonate as possible.

Acquiring Our System

There are three methods for acquiring our systems. These are:

  • Subscription
  • Purchase
  • License

The subscription method has the lowest up front cost to you but requires a monthly payment. It is similar to a lease but a big difference is that we do all maintenance and repairs.

Purchasing a system eliminates the monthly subscription payment but you must choose how you will maintain your system. We can do some of this for you with an extended maintenance contract.

For customers that need to install multiple systems, we can develop a licensing agreement that gives you the right to assemble, build, and operate our Biotreat systems. This is the overall lowest cost of acquisition (CAPEX) and operating costs (OPEX).

Bioreactor Lab