Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Plastic Foams as a Hydroponic Growing Medium

Transcript

Plastic Foams as a Hydroponic Growing Medium · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. This is your go-to podcast for
• 0:04
  all things soilless cultivation.
• 0:07
  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp. It's still a very hot day here,
• 0:11
  so the windows are open, the birds are tweeting.
• 0:14
  I'm just back from seven hours of flipping burgers at a soccer tournament in
• 0:19
  my village, so I am completely knackered.
• 0:23
  That's a word that translates into American? I don't know. But yeah,
• 0:27
  it's a tired day, but I thought I'd do one on an episode today about the use
• 0:32
  of plastic foams as a growing media in hydroponics, particularly NFT.
• 0:38
  Ebon Flood, and DWC.
• 0:41
  Now, these sorts of products you might be more familiar with in floristry,
• 0:46
  the sort of green foam, it's often called Oasis, that's a trade name,
• 0:50
  but these are also used by some in hydroponics as a growing media.
• 0:55
  Now, it's not as widespread as the use of cocoa or rockwool,
• 0:59
  and I think there's some good reasons for that.
• 1:01
  So the technical term for these plastic foams is phenol formaldehyde resins,
• 1:08
  and that's because they are formed by reacting phenol with formaldehyde.
• 1:14
  Both of those chemicals are hazardous to humans.
• 1:18
  Both of those compounds are extremely hazardous to humans.
• 1:20
  However, the actual foam that's created is non-hazardous.
• 1:24
  However i don't know if there's any information
• 1:27
  about how many how much residue of
• 1:30
  the initial material is left over in the manufacturing i'm sure the manufacturers
• 1:34
  say that very little is but there might be contamination so that might be one
• 1:37
  of the reasons that people might want to avoid it the other major reason is
• 1:42
  that it's a plastic and it's a polymer and you will want to reduce plastic use,
• 1:49
  especially plastics that you cannot recycle.
• 1:53
  And phenol for maldehyde resins, this oasis or any other type of material, is non-recyclable.
• 2:00
  Certain people have researched different ways to do it, but currently the only
• 2:03
  way you can get rid of it is incineration or just landfill. That's not good.
• 2:07
  Now, it might have some actual positive features,
• 2:12
  being cheaper than rockwool or cocoa and potentially you know having different
• 2:18
  water holding capacity should we say so there is one company called 10 lead
• 2:23
  and they're a chinese company and they manufacture it,
• 2:27
  And I saw a company at Greentech in Amsterdam, and they were also selling it.
• 2:32
  That might have been the same company.
• 2:33
  I don't know. I didn't take down their name, but that sparked this interest in it for this podcast.
• 2:38
  And there's a really interesting benefit they have on their website at 10lead.
• 2:44
  And they say, 10lead phenolic cubes are more biodegradable than Rockwool.
• 2:50
  Interestingly, they've used the term Rockwool there because that's a trade name.
• 2:53
  So if I was rockwool, I'd be onto them and say, can you please take that trade name off your website?
• 2:59
  So they're saying it's more biodegradable. And that's interesting because,
• 3:02
  yes, it is more biodegradable, but it's still a plastic.
• 3:06
  And rockwool, it's big, it's bulky.
• 3:10
  It doesn't biodegrade, but it's a rock. It's spun out rock.
• 3:15
  So if you buried it yes
• 3:18
  you might come 20 years later and find
• 3:21
  it buried and still looking like
• 3:24
  mineral wool or rock wool but it's it's
• 3:27
  you know it's not going to break down into anything hazardous there's
• 3:30
  not going to be any microplastics and things like this whereas phenolic
• 3:34
  foam cubes when they biodegrade will
• 3:37
  be biodegrading into hazardous plastic microplastics
• 3:41
  and things like this so it seems a crazy for me it seems
• 3:43
  like a crazy choice of a growing media and then the other one
• 3:46
  is it's cheaper well yeah you
• 3:49
  might be cheaper but you've got that issue of disposal
• 3:53
  so especially like cocoa and
• 3:56
  it's far easier to dispose of than than
• 3:59
  plastic and rock wool can be recycled it can
• 4:03
  be recycled into bricks and other uses i'm
• 4:06
  going to do a whole episode on cocoa
• 4:10
  versus rockwool because i went to the grodan what
• 4:14
  i'm looking for the grodan exhibit at
• 4:18
  greentech and i said you know i've been around all the cocoa stands today and
• 4:23
  they're all you know slagging off mineral wool and rockwool saying it's none
• 4:26
  it's not as good for the environment what's your take on this and they gave
• 4:29
  me loads of good information so really i'm going to do a long episode on rockwool
• 4:34
  versus mineral building hydroponics.
• 4:36
  And so there are recycling options if you're a large grower with mineral wool, certainly.
• 4:41
  For medium and small growers, not so much. But this phenolic formaldehyde resins,
• 4:49
  there is no recycling option.
• 4:51
  So even though it's cheaper, actually in the long term, it's going to be much
• 4:55
  more expensive, I think, because you're not going to be able to recycle it.
• 4:59
  Other advantages they claim, breathable, moisture retaining.
• 5:03
  How that compares to mineral wool i'm not so sure non-combustible well
• 5:07
  mineral wool is non-combustible it's insulation fire
• 5:10
  insulation as well cocoa potentially is combustible
• 5:13
  non-pollution non-toxic non-pollution is a hard one when it's a plastic non-toxic
• 5:19
  certainly won't break down release anything shouldn't release it if it is what
• 5:24
  it says it is then it shouldn't release anything even if you've got strong acids
• 5:27
  alkalis even things like peroxides it should be fairly stable it's not going
• 5:32
  to break down under extremes of heat.
• 5:34
  Insect-free, that's a big issue with cocoa.
• 5:38
  You get a lot of fungus gnats coming in in the bags of cocoa,
• 5:42
  especially if they've been stored outside.
• 5:45
  Now, in the UK, cocoa can come from, there's very few manufacturers of cocoa,
• 5:51
  but there's a number of distributors.
• 5:53
  And whether the distributor stores the cocoa outside or inside is a big issue.
• 5:57
  Because if you store it outside, then fungus gnats get into it.
• 6:00
  If it's wet when it arrives to the grow shop or if it's stored
• 6:03
  in the grow shop outside and you can get a lot of fungus gnats to
• 6:06
  try and find out whether it's coming from a distributor who
• 6:09
  stores it inside or outside so that's interesting easy
• 6:12
  to transplant that's debatable nutrients are not bound and are easily absorbed
• 6:18
  to a porous structure yeah that's fine i mean mineral wool and rock wool don't
• 6:21
  mineral wool and cocoa they also don't bind nutrients no cracking light in weight easier to harvest.
• 6:30
  Yes you can easier to harvest i don't
• 6:33
  know no cracking i don't think the others crack either so
• 6:36
  that's not an issue so that's interesting so phenolics formaldehyde
• 6:40
  resin is something i would avoid i think it's it's
• 6:44
  old technology that we we don't really need to be using
• 6:47
  plastics probably want to be using less plastics and certainly want
• 6:50
  to be using recycled plastics and yeah
• 6:54
  so if you've used phenolic formaldehyde resin
• 6:57
  and had amazing results then it'd be
• 7:00
  interesting to know the algae grows how algae grows on it as well
• 7:02
  it comes in a range of there's a number of different manufacturers
• 7:06
  they do grow cubes that can be
• 7:08
  pulled apart and things like this and they can be used for
• 7:11
  planting into cocoa and other mediums so yeah
• 7:14
  somebody out there must be using it because you don't exhibit at
• 7:17
  greentech if you haven't aren't making money serious
• 7:21
  money because it's not a cheap one to exhibit at
• 7:24
  you know it's going to cost you at least 10 000 pounds to exhibit that i have
• 7:27
  just answered my own question i've been on the 10 lead website and
• 7:29
  there is loads of pictures of algae covered in
• 7:32
  there of their phenolic resin interestingly they've got a picture comparing
• 7:38
  this to oasis and there's no difference in the growth of the plants but the
• 7:41
  oasis plants are not covered in so oasis must be a competitor product to on
• 7:47
  the phenolic resins and there's no algae on the oasis products but there is
• 7:50
  algae on the 10 lead products.
• 7:51
  The plants look exactly the same size so from that you would say that oasis
• 7:57
  is a better product for growing them but yeah interestingly sometimes there's
• 8:01
  issues with translations when it comes to Chinese.
• 8:03
  Websites. I speak a bit of Chinese, can read a bit of Chinese,
• 8:06
  but I wouldn't want to do a website in Chinese. So I'll cut them a bit of slack.
• 8:10
  If anyone who's got products that are phenolic resins, phenolic formality resins,
• 8:16
  and they think that I've got something wrong, then I'm more than happy,
• 8:19
  like any of my episodes, to correct in a future episode, make a correction,
• 8:23
  clarification, add extra information.
• 8:25
  As I say, follow up. The next an episode
• 8:28
  i'm hoping to do is a comparison of the sustainability
• 8:31
  of rockwall to coir cocoa
• 8:36
  fiber might be a couple of days that one might do one
• 8:39
  in between then because i'm still waiting on some information from um
• 8:42
  grodan the manufacturers of rockwall to
• 8:46
  get back to me with their full information on
• 8:49
  the sustainability and recyclability of their product but
• 8:52
  they um that should be that shouldn't be a problem if that
• 8:55
  was them i'd get back to me pretty soon so I don't have to do one without their information
• 8:58
  if there's any other manufacturers of Rockwell out there which I
• 9:01
  think there are and Coco want to provide any
• 9:04
  information that'd be fine I'm going to stop waffling now let you
• 9:07
  get back to your weekend this has been Hydroponics Daily if you have used phenolic
• 9:11
  resin formaldehyde resin if you know anybody who's used this Oasis type material
• 9:16
  then share this podcast with them if you've had this podcast shared with you
• 9:19
  then you owe the person who shared with you a big large drink it's nice hot
• 9:23
  it's hot out there today so a really ice cool drink um
• 9:26
  And if you found this useful,
• 9:29
  please screenshot an image of the podcast on your podcast provider and share
• 9:34
  it to social media and tell people to listen to it.
• 9:37
  That would be fandabbydozy, as they say in Scotland. Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.