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Scrubbers: Cleaning the Air in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
• 0:04
  Today we're talking about scrubbers.
• 0:06
  I say that in a funny way because if you're American, you've got no idea what
• 0:09
  I mean because a scrubber is just a chemical or an implement or a person who cleans things.
• 0:14
  Whereas in the UK and Ireland, a scrubber is a woman with loose morals.
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  Could be a bloke with loose morals really, or a prostitute. You call them a scrubber.
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  But we're talking about the former and a chemical scrubber in particular.
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  And these are becoming more and more popular in commercial horticulture.
• 0:31
  So you have your inlet filters that keep out pests and some diseases.
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  You have your outlet filters like an activated carbon
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  that keeps the smells from inside the grow room or the
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  greenhouse from going outside and then you can also have
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  a chemical scrubber inside the greenhouse to get rid
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  of chemicals in the air that you don't want and this
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  is particularly ethylene now ethylene
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  is a gas that is a hydrocarbon and
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  it is a potent plant hormone it's the one
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  of a few gaseous plant
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  hormones and if you're growing tomatoes and things
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  like this then it's deleterious it has negative
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  effects on the crop notably wilting and
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  leaf drop when the plants would normally be perfectly
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  healthy it can help with ripening but
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  it normally gives the symptoms of a flooded plant
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  flower drop a fruit drop so these
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  are not good things if you're growing a tomato crop or
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  a cucumber crop so people make chemical scrubbers and
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  the way they do this is they get a potassium permanganate solution
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  and they
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  bubble the air through this and clean the air and potassium
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  permanganate is a bright purple solution and it's
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  a potent oxidizing agent and it's
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  fairly safe as an oxidizing agent as oxidizing agents go so it's it's not a
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  crazy dangerous it's still hazardous but it's it's bright purple you can bubble
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  air through it you can keep it in a contained system and so you don't get exposed
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  to it it can also be used for treating wastewater.
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  But the solution shouldn't be used for treating hydroponic solution because
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  it pulls sulfur and iron out of solution. So only use it for cleaning the air.
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  And there are a couple of crops where I would advise you don't use a chemical scrubber.
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  And those are hops and cannabis because,
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  you want some ethylene there just to prevent hermaphrodisation.
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  If you were to remove all ethylene from the plant, say, by removing it all from
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  the air and using chemicals that prevented ethylene being sensed,
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  like 1-MCP, is a chemical that's
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  used in fresh produce, in post-harvest to prevent bananas from ripening,
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  or if you use bacteria that had a function an
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  enzyme called acc deaminase then that
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  would get rid of ethylene as well so there's three ways you can get rid of ethylene there
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  i've just mentioned one is a potassium permanganate chemical
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  scrubber two is releasing one mcp
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  into the grow room which which deactivates and
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  prevents ethylene from being sensed by the plant and the third is
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  bacteria with that acc deaminase enzyme that
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  pulls ethylene out of the plant prevents it from being
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  synthesized if you were to do that in
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  hops and cannabis then you you'd be prone to
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  hermaphrodization because feminize feminize to
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  express the feminine femininity and the female flowers
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  in those plants you need a small amount of ethylene so
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  tomatoes chemical scrubbers good idea and where you would really look at using
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  them is where you're using co2 enrichment from a burner and if that burner is
• 3:42
  old or it's not great combustion,
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  then it could be producing ethylene as a contaminant rather than just pure CO2.
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  And that's why the recommendations for.
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  Burners in grow rooms they always say go to
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  1000 ppm over that it becomes well it
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  becomes uneconomical you don't get the yield return but
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  you also start to get a lot of ethylene and the levels
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  of ethylene are raised too much and you can
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  get deleterious effects on the crop some crops are highly
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  susceptible to ethylene like tomatoes and other
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  plants will be completely resistant and won't show any
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  symptoms so if you if you think your plants are
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  susceptible to ethylene you can you can easily test that but
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  there's chemicals that you can put on that that show ethylene i
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  mean if they respond to a few ripe bananas around them as
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  well that give off ethylene then then you know
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  that they're going to be sensitive to ethylene potassium permanganate
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  as well as being used as a chemical scrubber where you have a pump pushing the
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  air through and bubbling through they they're also
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  used to impregnate the boxes that
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  bananas come are imported in and that helps scrub
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  the ethylene in from the bananas and prevents their
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  ripening unduly premature ripening you
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  could also use it to remove some of the smells in the grow room
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  as well but as i say you probably want to.
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  Use activated carbon for that for removing
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  odors so that's been the subject of
• 5:10
  today's hydroponics daily scrubbers for
• 5:15
  more stupidity like this please tune
• 5:18
  in again tomorrow the listening figures are on the up
• 5:21
  i'm really pleased we've we are
• 5:24
  regularly in the top 100 home and
• 5:27
  garden podcasts in the us in
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  canada uk australia and i think that's really good because we're now past easter
• 5:33
  and we're really into the time when people should be growing outdoors so to
• 5:37
  have a hydroponics podcast in the top 100 top 50 even top 30 is fantastic so
• 5:43
  thanks very much for listening and see you again tomorrow thank you very much.