Greenhouse waste water treatment research funded

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Researchers at Queens University and Fleming College have received $602,496 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The money, to be spent over three years,  will be used to advance their research into the “optimization of water treatment technologies for the greenhouse industry.”

The research dollars are part of an initiative by the federal government to support research partnerships between colleges, universities and businesses. In total, $18 million is being spent to support 20 such partnership-projects.

Queens engineering professor Bruce Anderson and Fleming professor Brent Wootton will share the NSERC grant. Both researchers are temporarily out of the country but a Queens news release says their research involves the use of wetlands and salt-accumulating plants which could remove up to 25 per cent of salt in water discharged from greenhouses allowing the water to be recycled.

The researchers are working with industry partner Aqua Treatment Technologies of Camden owned by Lloyd Rozema. He says they are already doing experimental work at three constructed wetland waste water treatment facilities Aqua has built for greenhouse operators. He says they are testing the efficiency of salt-accumulating plants and various root-bed media in which the plants grow. “We’re looking at treatment facilities and looking to enhance the performance,” Rozema says. BF