Trial aims to reuse wastewater at vertical farm

GrowUp Farms’ trial with Salinity Solutions aims to demonstrate how efficiently wastewater can be captured, purified to the highest food standards and reused at GrowUp’s farm in Kent. 

In a statement, GrowUp Farms impact director Gillon Dobie said: “Producing more food with less resources is central to our philosophy, no more so than when it comes to our water use. We’re already making great strides to conserve this precious resource at our vertical farm in Kent and we’re striving to get even better.”

The global demand for water is reportedly set to double over the next five years. Water treatment consumes four per cent of the world’s total electricity production and conventional reverse osmosis - a process where water is purified by pumping it through a semi-permeable membrane - is energy intensive.

Compact and easily transportable, Salinity Solutions’ technology is said to use half the energy of existing systems while recovering up to 98 per cent of clean water. It does this through a patented combination of a pressure exchange vessel and advanced recirculation control, developed from theory to a working solution spanning 10 years of research at the Universities of Birmingham and Aston. The company’s solution could be applied also to other sectors globally to help solve the emerging global water crisis. 

Salinity Solutions’ co-founder Liam Burlace said: “Our shared goal is to reduce the consumption of energy and water so the results of this trial could have a significant impact on how the food industry manages its resources.” 

Funding for the trial at GrowUp Farms’ site in Kent has been secured through a £29,000 sustainability grant from Growing Kent and Medway’s ‘Business Sustainability Challenge’ grant. GrowUp Farms was one of 13 beneficiaries of a grant pot worth over £1.6m.