Controlling Mineral Scale at Barrington Dairy
Severe mineral scale buildup was effecting equipment and soils at Barrington Dairy in Montezuma Georgia. The problem was so severe they would have to pull their pumps apart every 3 – 4 months to remove scale and service equipment.
As with most dairies, wash (shed) water is moved to settling ponds where solids settle and liquids are ultimately reused as ‘brown water’ for fertigating crops. The issue is that this water is so extremely high in calcium, ammonia, struvite, and other minerals that it quickly adheres to equipment creating scale buildup at an accelerated rate resulting in higher pumping costs due inefficiencies relating to mineral buildup on impellers, equipment, and pipes.
There are chemical and physical means of removing the mineral scale buildup but these involve scheduling downtime and high costs relating to manpower, parts, and chemicals. This is a recurring issue so this impact and cost are incurred on an ongoing basis.
The alternative ‘green’, ‘once and done’, solution is to install a Maximum H2O High Mineral Content (HMC) appliance. Since they had 2 identical pumps side by side, they choose to install the H2O Maximizer on the intake side of one line and leave the other untreated line as a control check.
Two months later they decided to pull the pumps apart and to inspect.
The results spoke volumes.
Control (untreated) line, notice the mineral scale buildup in the pipe and encrusting the impeller (reducing pump efficiency).
Maximum H2O line, no scale buildup at all. The minerals are held in solution and are now bioavailable to the crops as nutrients, helping to reduce fertilizer input costs.
They have since reported that the scale is being removed throughout the lines and purging out the sand traps on their pivots.
After installing Maximum H2O, Barrington Dairy increased yields to 93.4 tons / acre on green chop. Highest yield yet!
Mission accomplished!