DALBY Rural Supplies on Queensland's Darling Downs is reporting quick interest in new technology from Italy that desalinates bore water for irrigation and domestic use.
Water and irrigation manager Dan Cobden said the business had set up a Plimmer capacitative deionisation (CDI) unit for in-store and on-site demonstrations.
The Plimmer units are made by Italian company, Idropan Dell'Orto Depuratori, and imported by Idropan Australia.
A company spokesman said the Plimmer CDI units desalinated water without using resin or membrane filters and required no chemical additives to achieve results.
The only pre-treatment was simple filtration to remove suspended clays and solids.
Plimmer relied on a low-voltage electrostatic process that removed up to 90 per cent of a range contaminants that caused hardness and salinity in bore water, including sodium chloride, sodium sulphate, ammonia, iron and magnesium.
Idropan Australia's Rob Young said Australian groundwater was often too salty to meet the desired standards for domestic or farm use.
"It's generally agreed that salinity above 480 ppm total dissolved salts (TDS) isn't ideal for domestic drinking water or for pigs and chickens, while TDS levels above 1500 ppm do not work well for other stock or for crops that are not salt tolerant," he said.
Neil Lyon
National machinery writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
National machinery writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
