AgTech
CapDI FOR THE AG TECH INDUSTRY
CapDI technology is a revolutionary way to treat water sources for irrigation in Agriculture & Horticulture; from greenhouses to vast farmland, Voltea’s CapDI is the environmentally responsible choice for tunable water deionization to irrigate sensitive crops. The robust, reliable water treatment systems offered by Voltea incorporate fully automated self-cleaning with dynamic control ensuring the water produced is of consistent high quality, adjusting to varying concentration of feed water constituents.
CapDI FOR HORTICULTURE VIDEO!
HORTICULTURE
With a growing world population and stricter water use controls, the demands on horticulture are ever-increasing. Too much sodium in irrigation water causes crop damage, yield loss, and hampers water and fertilizer reuse.
CapDI tunably removes and controls TDS and sodium levels without removing all minerals, allowing users to select the optimal level of sodium and minerals for each crop’s irrigation water. Horticulture businesses benefit from using CapDI because of its low energy consumption, no required chemicals, minimal maintenance, as well as overall reduced water and fertilizer consumption. Treating your irrigation water with CapDI enables higher quality products at better yields, all while dramatically lowering operational costs!
VINEYARDS AND WINEMAKING
Voltea’s CapDI systems provide clean, pure water through tunable deionization for an array of applications within the wine industry. From the vine to the bottle, CapDI is effective at removing TDS at many points in the process.
Growing grapes requires a large volume of water, varying significantly depending on the location and grape variety. It has been reported that anywhere between 16 and 92 gallons of irrigation water is required to produce one bottle of wine.
During the production of wine, water is used as process water as well as for washing and cleaning. It is estimated that the use of water is four times the amount of wine produced. It is in this area that there has been great interest in implementing wastewater treatment technologies to allow the reuse of water.
Once wine has been produced it must be packaged. Many may not consider it, but water is also used heavily in this stage for washing, cleaning, and spot-free rinsing for quality branding purposes.
HORTICULTURE CASE STUDY
Agriculture is an important market for Mexico, with the industry employing 16% of the national workforce. Unfortunately, it also presents a huge, unsustainable demand on water sources. In Mexico, agriculture is responsible for 77% of the total water withdrawn. 38% of countrywide withdrawal is from groundwater aquifers, many of which are over-exploited and located where the annual rainfall volume is insufficient to replace the extraction rate. Water scarcity is causing increased salinity variability as well as increasing water prices, both of which are unfavorable for crop growers. The worse consequence is that for many crops, high salinity in irrigation water can cause significant reductions in yield.
A leading Mexican tomato grower purchases tomato seedlings to grow in their own greenhouse. The grower needs an optimal, improved feed water quality to grow its own seedlings, rather than purchasing them locally. Tomato seedlings are known to have high sensitivities to salinity, therefore the grower needed a solution to treat their irrigation water to allow for in-house growing.
Voltea provided an IS-12 CapDI System as it requires minimal pre-treatment and can cope with silica levels up to 150 ppm. Additionally, the fully automated cleaning and remote monitoring capabilities minimize user intervention and maintenance, allowing the customer to focus on their core business.
CapDI tunably removed sodium and bicarbonates without having to remove all of the more beneficial minerals in the grower’s irrigation water. By implementing a tunable Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) removal solution, the grower experienced significant OpEx savings by reducing the use of fertilizers and allowing water reuse on-site. This Voltea customer now successfully grows their own seedlings in-house without having to purchase from a third party, thus increasing profitability.
Of high importance to the grower is the ability to target a range of different sodium levels as required by each particular crop. CapDI’s tunable salt removal capability perfectly achieves this by automatically accounting for any variations in feed water quality and flow rate to give a consistent output quality.
Voltea’s IS-12 CapDI System consistently produced the quality and quantity of water required to meet our customer’s demands. 85% water recovery was consistently maintained by Voltea’s system having a fully automated Cleaning-In-Place (CIP) that features automatic module cleaning if the CapDI System measures a rise in differential pressure. This water is purified to a suitable reuse quality, therefore reducing the overall amount of fresh deep well water consumed. The high water recovery also allows a smaller volume of waste that would require treatment before discharge, resulting in a reduced impact to the aquifer.
Voltea’s CapDI System is continuing to help this facility with the production of crops at a reduced environmental impact, which in the long term will assist in greater productivity and reduced operating expense.
SIZING
FLOW RATE
POWER
TEMPERATURE
TDS
Key factors go into determining the size of the Voltea system for a customer. Factors include flow rate, power, water temperature, and TDS removal requirements. Simple modular design provides the flexibility to treat a few mL/min up to thousands of m3/hr in a compact footprint.