Evaporation
Overview
Many greenhouse and substrate growers produce a modest amount of drainage water. The water volume is often too low to justify an expensive treatment solution. So what do you do? Many of these companies store this water in on-premise tanks. This creates a new non-value added cost- hauling away the water to the local wastewater treatment plant, or, burning expensive natural gas to evaporate the water. We have a better idea that will cost you about 90% less than either of these options.
Harnessing the Power of Evapotranspiration (ETo)
Plants, especially some of those in the grass family, can have an enormous appetite for water and nutrients. Anyone that has a big grass lawn knows the challenge of watering that grass during the summer, and, keeping it green. Normally, we try to minimize water loss via evaporation when growing plants. But if we turn that logic upside down, we can use the evaporative and transpiration losses to build a very effective wastewater evaporator.
Hydroponics Enable a Low Cost but Highly Effective Solution
Hydroponics, especially dutch bucket or “bato bucket” designs, offer a low cost but familiar set of tools for constructing an evaporator. Specially curated plants are grown in these hydroponic containers under conditions that maximize water loss. Sounds counter-intuitive but there are many benefits to this approach.
Benefits of Our PhytoVap Evaporator
Using the Evaporator with an On-Site Pond
Using a man-made pond to collect your runoff? No problem – just surround your pond with an array of our hydroponic buckets. Use a simple pump to move water out to the array every 3-4 hours. The plants with evaporate and transpire water and lower the TDS of the water in the reservoir.
You can learn more about this approach at our PhytoVap product pages.