Companies that practice vertical farming need an effective way to provide clean water for their crops, maintain water quality while reusing water, and effectively conserve water resources. Filtration is a critical step in ensuring these benefits. Spiral Water Technologies (SWT) is a leading provider of vertical farming filtration products and services. We provide growers with Advanced Automated Self-cleaning Filters that enable farmers to treat, recycle, and reuse wastewater for their vertical farms effectively and efficiently.
What’s Vertical Farming?
Vertical farming is an innovative method of growing crops in stacked layers, typically within hydroponic setups, using sustainably powered artificial light sources and precise nutrient solutions to maximize yield and minimize resource use.
This technique is becoming increasingly popular as it enables growth under controlled conditions free from weather fluctuations and land-related limitations. The setting of a vertical farm allows for better control of temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels, resulting in increased yields and minimal environmental impact.
A wide range of crops are produced in vertical farms, ranging from kale, lettuce, strawberries, microgreens, basil, mint, and chives to specialty offerings.
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Vertical Farming Filtration Process
Water must be purified before it’s used in hydroponic systems. This ensures that the nutrients provided to plants are clean and free of contaminants. SWT uses specialized next-generation automatic self-cleaning filters to ensure that the water used on the farm is free from particles and other solid debris.
Here’s an overview of the vertical farming filtration process using SWT’s filters:
- Water Preparation: Before the water undergoes prefiltration, any large debris or sediment is first removed through a coarse filter or settling process.
- Introduction of Spiral Water Filters: Our automatic filtration products are specifically designed to remove TSS (Total Suspended Solids) and BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand), such as debris and organic matter from the water stream.
- Clean Water Output: The output of the filtration process is clean water, free from impurities such as minerals and salts. It’s fit for use in various vertical farming processes such as hydroponics and drip irrigation.
Benefits of Filtration for Vertical Farming
Using Spiral Water Technologies’ (SWT) filtration products has the following benefits:
Decreased Environmental Impact
Vertical farming is popular in modern-day agriculture as it helps minimize land usage, promoting sustainability, especially in urban areas where land is scarce. Farming in urban areas also reduces the need to transport produce from rural areas, minimizing pollution from vehicles’ fuel emissions. SWT’s filtration products are designed with sustainability in mind and have the industry’s smallest footprint. They are modular, scalable, and simple to maintain, ideal for space-efficient vertical farms.
Decreased Water Use
Agriculture is estimated to contribute to about 70-80% of the world’s freshwater use. Vertical farming is much more sustainable as it uses far less water than traditional agriculture, helping achieve conservation goals. Vertical farms also have water treatment processes to recycle and reuse water within their systems.
With a continuous efficiency of up to 99%, SWT’s filtration products can help farmers realize those goals. The high filtration rate reduces wastage, minimizing the need to fetch fresh water from natural sources.
Increased Efficiency
Since crops can be grown indoors, vertical farms enable year-round crop production. The produce is also closer to the consumers and fresher. Also, vertical farming and aquaculture (a method of fish rearing in stacked layers) can be combined in a system called aquaponics to create a mutually beneficial ecosystem where farmers use the fish waste to fertilize crops while the crops act as natural filters purifying the water for the fish.
Vertical farming is even made more efficient by our filters. They provide trouble-free operation in environments with higher TSS levels and automatically manage variable TSS levels. They operate without pulsing at low system pressures of up to 10 psig and don’t require additional pump modifications because we make them using a seamless retrofitting process.
High-Quality Filter Systems from SWT
SWT’s filters help reduce environmental impact, conserve water resources, and improve operational efficiency in vertical farms. Contact us today to learn more about our filtration solutions and get a free filtration audit.