I spent some time today cleaning out my Fre-Flo water conditioner and I wanted to share a bit about irrigation water and fertilizer utilization in #garden and #nursery situations.
This device here takes the calcium ions in our water and carbonate ions in the water and combines them back together into a form of calcium carbonate crystals called vaterite, which is like talc powder when dried.
Since the ions are combined into the crystal and remain crystalized in the water, they won't bond with other ions in the water or soil.
This helps prevent a few things for us in the garden:
- the calcium and carbonate ions from bonding with other fertilizers, helping to lessen the amount of fertilizers needed and improving the efficiency of microbes in the soil getting needed nutrients to plants
- helps us from getting water spots on our plant leaves in the nursery and clogging irrigation parts with minerals. The vaterite will wash off in the rain rather than form crystals on the plant surfaces.
Incidentally we're using this to treat all the water in our house/farm since it's in-line with the line from the well. So this helps with clogged shower heads and sinks and water spots as well as making soap go farther.
Inside this device is a core which is coated with a catalyst to combine the calcium and carbonate ions into crystals. The rough surface helps add turbidity to the water to ensure the ions come in contact with the catalyst:
The core fits into a pipe which goes in-line with your water line, so it doesn't impeded the flow of water:
This gets cleaned out 2-3x per year with some CLR (Calcium-Lime-Rust) solvent just to clean up the catalyst. There are no filters or consumables other than the CLR cleaner.
Here is the website for the company describing the science behind it:
https://freflowater.com/the-science-of-fre-flo
I learned about the effects of calcium carbonate salts especially with respect to soil science (fertilizers) from John Kempf via Matt Powers Regenerative Soil Science course. Here's an article on the interaction of hard water specifically calcium carbonate in agriculture:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-chemistry-of-bumper-crops-excerpt/
#plantstr #gardening #permaculture #grownostr