Recycling Municipal Wastewater for Hydroponic Culture

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Abstract
Reclaimed, secondary-treated municipal wastewater after chlorination and ponding is being used as the sole source of water and mineral nutrients in research studies on the hydroponic culture of ornamental and vegetable crops. A feasibility study is in progress to determine if greenhouse crops (e.g. tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and chrysanthemums) can be produced using secondary-treated effluent as a water nutrient source, while at the same time removing sufficient primary nutrients and perhaps trace elements to also function as a tertiary treatment process. The cover photo of tomatoes illustrates the type of production achieved. Secondary-treated municipal wastewater constitutes an attractive alternative source of water and fertilizer nutrients for crop production since the nutrients present in the wastewater are already in a usable form and do not require any additional energy input to make them available to plants. At the same time, the removal of nutrients from waste-water during crop production would reduce the pollution load that inherently remains after secondary treatment. Additionally, when these two processes are combined in the same operation, the heat and carbon dioxide produced as byproducts in treatment processes could be used to enhance crop production. Thus, the combined processes could constitute a more attractive, economic alternative than the sums of the two separate operations.

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