Farming applications

Farming applications

The water is essential in order to guarantee the fitness of the animals (e.g. cattle, chickens, sheep, pigs) and to achieve the best productive animals performance. However, not only the quantity of the water can influence the animals desired growth but also the quality of the water.
The water used in the farm can have its origin from a number of different sources, such as water wells, civil water networks and to a less extent from rivers and other superficial sources.
Excluding the water from civil networks (containing free chlorine), the other sources usually have a high concentration of dissolved and suspended solids and pathogens. Consequently, in order to reduce their negative effects, the contaminated water used in the farms, should undergo technological treatment in order to reduce substances that can be harmful for the animals.
It was shown for the animals livestock that high quality water (i.e. with low levels of hardness, acidity, salinity, nitrates, sulphates, chlorides and heavy metals) has the benefit to:
• Reduce health problems,
• Increase significantly the yield and the quality of the milk,
• Increase the quality of the meat,
• Favour the growth of the calf and the development of the animals,
• Decrease the number of abortions.
In the context of the farm, some water treatment technologies like standard filtration and ion exchange resins do not offer a complete efficient solution, since these technologies can remove only some substances from the contaminated water. However, the reverse osmosis technology has demonstrated to be the most efficient technology.