Eric Smith
National Horticulture Sales Manager
The future of water treatment has arrived in the form of OxyFusion® from BioSafe Systems. The on-site and on-demand peroxyacetic acid (PAA) generating, dosing, and monitoring system can be tailored for use in horticultural and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) settings.
“It’s a highly customizable system based on customers’ needs – there is no cookie-cutter approach,” Eric Smith, Horticulture Sales Manager at BioSafe Systems, says of OxyFusion. “We tailor it to the economic needs of the grower.”
OxyFusion has been in use for just over a year and is successful in biofilm removal and general water treatment in hydroponic systems, Smith says, noting it is a proven alternative to chlorine-based water treatments.
OxyFusion offers growers myriad benefits, one being data collection, which has become more prevalent in the industry, Smith says.
“Growers want and need to have this in-formation,” he adds, noting the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) has spurred food grow-ers to track such information for regulatory rea-sons and possible audits. “OxyFusion can monitor many different parameters, not just the volume of PAA being produced and injected, but also pH, electrical conductivity, and temperature.”
Smith points out the data generated by OxyFusion, which is stored in the BioSafe Systems Cloud, is also easily accessible on smartphones from anywhere in the world.
Another benefit is OxyFusion generates a high-volume of PAA on-site, so greenhouses don’t have to transport large volumes of water to their operations. The on-site generation is done through a patented process involving three concentrated precursor chemicals, which limit material handling and worker exposure. Because it features multiple manifold outlets, OxyFusion can produce separate lines of concentrated PAA at different ppm to carry PAA for a separate application to different water sources simultaneously.
“Any operation that’s using a lot of PAA can ben-efit from on-site generation,” Smith stresses. “It’s a much safer way to treat high volumes of water as opposed to manual dosing.”
OxyFusion’s PAA also differs from traditional peroxyacetic acid in that it is generated at a high pH with less corrosivity and no odor.
Another benefit, specifically in CEA or hydroponic leafy production, is that OxyFusion PAA is applied without the corresponding hydrogen peroxide, as is found in traditional PAA products, which greatly reduces root issues. Even at the lowest rates, OxyFusion PAA can greatly reduce or eliminate biofilms, which are known to harbor plant and human health pathogens, Smith explains.
In addition, no alarms are needed for safety, and there are no discharge restrictions.
With OxyFusion, water treatment has been taken to another level and has given growers peace of mind with everyday operations. “It checks off a lot of boxes,” Smith says of the technology.
