imagine
today, this two-acre plot of land is mostly empty and unproductive. not too useful for the small farmer who owns this land in West Texas. but Ralph does the best he can by renting out the old adobe hut as an Airbnb, taking some dirt for use on his main farm, and growing some crops with the salty wellwater that is available at this site.
imagine instead, rows and rows of grapevines running up and down the field. with the power of water de-salting, we can make this a reality. this is exactly what we are working to achieve with a pilot project funded by the Bureau of Reclamation and profiled in a just-published article written wonderfully by Lela Nargi for Knowable Magazine.
Lela and her daughter/photographer flew out to El Paso in August to visit the site and meet Ralph. we also got to visit the El Paso Desalination Plant and the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility, also featured in the article. of course, we also stopped by White Sands National Park (not featured in the article). i think Lela did a great job of discussing both the promise and challenges of inland desalination for agriculture.
there are three reasons this is a flagship demonstration of Harmony Desalting’s batch technology:
SMALLEST BRINE POND: by pushing beyond the salinity limits of conventional membrane desalination, our batch brine concentrator reduces the size of the required brine evaporation pond by more than half. we are limiting the pond to a corner of the plot rather than taking up a full quarter of the available footprint, so Ralph gets to grow and sell more grapes.
FIT FOR OFF-GRID: batch desalting is the perfect match for solar power due to its unmatched energy-efficiency and flexibility. like at many other farms, it would have been prohibitively expensive to bring 3-phase grid power to the site.
PAIN-FREE: the inherent scaling-resistance of the batch process means we can eliminate chemical dosing and minimize the need for replacing the membranes. we work to provide a steady supply of fresh water so that Ralph and his team can focus on the farming.
this is critical work, particularly in a state which is losing one farm each week for lack of water. the timing is perfect if you’d like to join us on our mission. we’re hiring!