Can you RO wastewater for reuse?

[Mandelbr0t]

Hey everyone, I'm in the process of setting up a hydroponic coco setup, originally planning on doing drain to waste, with drip emitters. However, I am concerned about how to safely dispose of all the wastewater. I do not want to contaminate the environment or anything like that. I'm definitely not rushing to spend $15,000-$20,000+ on a new separate septic and drain field just to handle the problem. My experience is solely with soil.

If I ran the coco runoff through an RO system, would that sufficiently "clean" the water, so that I could then reuse it and mainly avoid needing to drain anything outside? My friend who has (limited) experience with hydro acts like it wouldn't be "good enough", but it's my understanding that people use recirculating systems, where they are using the same runoff as new inputs again, and just adjusting up or down for pH/EC etc? If you can recirculate like that, surely running the runoff through RO would work, no? Or am I overlooking something?

This will be a 26 light setup (20 in flower), so there will be a good bit of runoff/wastewater to deal with I imagine. The RO systems I'm looking at have 5 stages:

1st stage removes dust, particles, and rust
2nd stage removes chlorine, tastes, odors, cloudiness, colors, VOCs and other chemicals
3rd stage further removes residual chemicals, tastes, and odors, "guarantee purity"
4th stage removes up to 99% of contaminants including arsenic, lead, fluoride, heavy metals, etc.
5th stage removes any possible residual taste & impurity from the tank.

If the RO or other filtration is not sufficient to "clean" the wastewater runoff, what would be some ways to get rid of the wastewater in an environmentally friendly way, preferably without costing an arm and a leg?

I appreciate any input/advice.

 

[Winterone]

I looked at this a little what needs to happen is you have to have a pump that is strong enough to supply enough pressure to operate the ro system. If you can supply waste water to the system at pressure you can clean the waste water. I certainly would be interested in seeing a system that did this.

 

[Mandelbr0t]

I looked at this a little what needs to happen is you have to have a pump that is strong enough to supply enough pressure to operate the ro system. If you can supply waste water to the system at pressure you can clean the waste water. I certainly would be interested in seeing a system that did this.

I have a DAB E.sybox Mini 3 (https://www.aquascience.net/dab-e-sybox-mini-3) that I was going to be using before the initial RO that feeds the main supply reservoir, before it goes into the Dosatron. I'm not sure if it can handle the pressure of the initial RO, Dosatron, all the way out to all the pots/emitters, and then back to *another* RO that would "clean" the water for re-use. If not, it would still be orders of magnitude cheaper to buy another E.Sysbox versus having to put an entire new septic and drain field in. *If* it would otherwise work

 

[Cashmeh]

Hey everyone, I'm in the process of setting up a hydroponic coco setup, originally planning on doing drain to waste, with drip emitters. However, I am concerned about how to safely dispose of all the wastewater. I do not want to contaminate the environment or anything like that. I'm definitely not rushing to spend $15,000-$20,000+ on a new separate septic and drain field just to handle the problem. My experience is solely with soil.

If I ran the coco runoff through an RO system, would that sufficiently "clean" the water, so that I could then reuse it and mainly avoid needing to drain anything outside? My friend who has (limited) experience with hydro acts like it wouldn't be "good enough", but it's my understanding that people use recirculating systems, where they are using the same runoff as new inputs again, and just adjusting up or down for pH/EC etc? If you can recirculate like that, surely running the runoff through RO would work, no? Or am I overlooking something?

This will be a 26 light setup (20 in flower), so there will be a good bit of runoff/wastewater to deal with I imagine. The RO systems I'm looking at have 5 stages:

1st stage removes dust, particles, and rust
2nd stage removes chlorine, tastes, odors, cloudiness, colors, VOCs and other chemicals
3rd stage further removes residual chemicals, tastes, and odors, "guarantee purity"
4th stage removes up to 99% of contaminants including arsenic, lead, fluoride, heavy metals, etc.
5th stage removes any possible residual taste & impurity from the tank.

If the RO or other filtration is not sufficient to "clean" the wastewater runoff, what would be some ways to get rid of the wastewater in an environmentally friendly way, preferably without costing an arm and a leg?

I appreciate any input/advice.

So can you tell me more about how its bad for the environment to put high NPK down the drain, or out in my yard, or even in the public sewer? Wouldnt it just make my shit grow better or cost the citys facility more to clean? Im really not trying to be a smart ass honestly just I drain my RDWC constantly and I dont wanna feel bad about it lol. So tell me why I shouldnt please, perhaps ill go down the road your going one day. Last thing I need is the new world order blaming me for climate change.

So my thoughts are you only got 20 in flower, and your not using the amount of water I will be in my 6 plant 70 gallon setup. I bet on average I dump 20 gallon a month, perhaps 30, but I make twice that lol, plants drink. Anyways, if you dial in your system where there is almost no runoff, this will greatly change the setup you need. If you want to filter 100 gallon per month id just go with some gravity fed filters and tank above them. Then at least you can just keep changing filters and be done. I dont know how bacteria register on the PPM meters lol, but even if you RO filter it, I would still Sterilize it somehow too. The microcosmos tends to multiple overtime.

Now if you have alot of runoff, floculant tanks, pond or septic system like you said. The other thing is you can go all organic on your feed and then feel more comfortable using it as feed for something. Perhaps get a composter and add your run off to the mix somehow lol. There is just so much waste in weed, but I know it could all make good fertilizer.

 

[thcoso]

All water on this planet, assuming it wasn’t made artificiality by chemistry has been here for billions of years. That water has been filtered by natural and synthetic means billions of times too. Think like this, billions of animals have pissed out the water I’m drinking now. Cool. So, yea, clean and reuse. But, why. Clean water is cheep b

 

[Grapefruitroop]

If I ran the coco runoff through an RO system, would that sufficiently "clean" the water, so that I could then reuse it and mainly avoid needing to drain anything outside?

My RO system has a flow rate based on experiment they did on 500 ppm water at a certain temperature....
Maybe contact the company to ask about higher ppm water would be a good idea...
In order to clean it , you ll need pressure, and have to consider that your filters will last less, and the flowrate will be much less than the one advertized cause you will be running higher ppm on runoff...
Also you still will throw away a 3rd of the water out thru the waste water line of the RO system....and this will probably be your biggest problem....i immagine your ona septic right or offgridd?

 

[Mandelbr0t]

So can you tell me more about how its bad for the environment to put high NPK down the drain, or out in my yard, or even in the public sewer? Wouldnt it just make my shit grow better or cost the citys facility more to clean? Im really not trying to be a smart ass honestly just I drain my RDWC constantly and I dont wanna feel bad about it lol. So tell me why I shouldnt please, perhaps ill go down the road your going one day. Last thing I need is the new world order blaming me for climate change.

So my thoughts are you only got 20 in flower, and your not using the amount of water I will be in my 6 plant 70 gallon setup. I bet on average I dump 20 gallon a month, perhaps 30, but I make twice that lol, plants drink. Anyways, if you dial in your system where there is almost no runoff, this will greatly change the setup you need. If you want to filter 100 gallon per month id just go with some gravity fed filters and tank above them. Then at least you can just keep changing filters and be done. I dont know how bacteria register on the PPM meters lol, but even if you RO filter it, I would still Sterilize it somehow too. The microcosmos tends to multiple overtime.

Now if you have alot of runoff, floculant tanks, pond or septic system like you said. The other thing is you can go all organic on your feed and then feel more comfortable using it as feed for something. Perhaps get a composter and add your run off to the mix somehow lol. There is just so much waste in weed, but I know it could all make good fertilizer.

The truth is, I don't know enough about it all to make an informed decision at this point, which is where my concern is and why I'm asking the hive brain. I'm on well water, so I definitely don't want to potentially contaminate my water supply (especially since I drink close to a gallon a day of water out of the well.) When I was thinking through it last night, I thought of the fact that in a septic system, it's my understanding that the shit/piss/gray water flows into the septic, then the liquids flow into the drain field, which then leeches it into the soil. It seems to follow that if the soil is capable of breaking down shit/piss safely, and filtering it naturally before it reaches well water/water tables/groundwater, that a bunch of chemical fertilizers could also be broken down safely; especially since, as you said, these are nutrients that plants use anyways.

However, with that said, I know that the guy who invented chemical fertilizers, by the time he was dying, regretted doing so because of the effect on the environment (per "Teaming with Nutrients" book.) I'm planning on using Athena Pro nutrients (with Cleanse and Balance from the Blended line), and I'm definitely no expert on Safety Data Sheets. Most of them say "Not classified as hazardous," but I guess I don't know enough about how they classify these things, and it seems unlikely they are imagining a scenario where you dump hundreds of gallons into the soil, that potentially leeches into your well water over time, which you then consume.

My overall concern is some harm coming from too much of the chemical fertilizers getting into my water supply. Also, I don't know if I am misunderstanding you or vice versa, but I was saying I was doing 20 lights in flower (6 in veg), rather than 20 plants. I don't even have a good idea of how much runoff there will be, because I've never done hydro/coco/drip and waste. My only experience is with soil and hand watering. If the runoff is only a couple hundred gallons a month, that seems like something I could just dig a large, deep hole, fill it with the right kind of gravel/rock, and then have a PVC pipe that would drain into that. That's assuming though that it would be safe to do so to begin with (for my drinking water supply.)

 

[Mandelbr0t]

All water on this planet, assuming it wasn’t made artificiality by chemistry has been here for billions of years. That water has been filtered by natural and synthetic means billions of times too. Think like this, billions of animals have pissed out the water I’m drinking now. Cool. So, yea, clean and reuse. But, why. Clean water is cheep b

As I was saying to Cashmeh, my concern is any potential contamination to the water I get from a well, that I drink a large amount of every day.

My RO system has a flow rate based on experiment they did on 500 ppm water at a certain temperature....
Maybe contact the company to ask about higher ppm water would be a good idea...
In order to clean it , you ll need pressure, and have to consider that your filters will last less, and the flowrate will be much less than the one advertized cause you will be running higher ppm on runoff...
Also you still will throw away a 3rd of the water out thru the waste water line of the RO system....and this will probably be your biggest problem....i immagine your ona septic right or offgridd?

That is correct, I am on well and septic. If it's a matter of flow rate, that's not a problem because of the DAB E.sybox water booster pump I have; if I need to add another one that would not be a problem either if it solved this issue. When I emailed the company (APEC) that makes the RO systems I was thinking of using, they said, "Our RO systems are not designed for filtering recycled waste water for this type of usage. I have not specifically dealt with anyone needing to do something like this."

Perhaps it is just their RO systems, because other RO systems/companies seem to act like you definitely CAN RO the wastewater to re-use: https://hyper-logic.com/nutrient-runoff-filtration-methods/

 

[Cashmeh]

Yea just look into the floccing methods instead of septic methods. Instead of using bacteria you can use an agent that makes all floating particles become a solid and sink. If the bottom is lined with rubber, and you have a feed pipe, and discharge pipe, just clean the bottom and rego. You pump the floccing agent into the tank, mix it, let it set for a day or 2, then test it. I know its clean enough for the EPA to allow it in their public waterways. Hell you could distill it all too lol. So many methods for doing this, but if your main concern is your own drinking water id just study coco drip until you understand how to achieve as little run off as possible. That would tell you how much you have to filter basically so you know then how much you will be filtering. I imagine alot at the start lol, but then not so much over time.

Just whatever you do, dont overthink it honestly. Id start your grow operation with one plant, dial it down to as little run off as possible, then boom multiple and ask us again. If its legal where you live just much all your trimmings and spray them with that and let it all dry out and compost lol. . sell that shit to some farmers or something. Anywawys ill leave ya to it. Good luck man