ALIX, Alta. – A growing pile of yellow snow in a farmer’s field is not necessarily a bad thing.
“We prefer to call it mocha,” said Dennett Netterville, an engineer with Delta Engineering.
This Canadian company developed the snowfluent system which converts waste water into snow. In the spring it slowly melts away without harming the environment.
For agriculture and food processors with large amounts of waste water, this could be one way to handle a smelly problem.
Westcan Malting Ltd. at Alix is using the system on a trial basis. Its lagoons are getting too full so it is using this system to draw down the brackish and foul smelling water.
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The equipment arrived Feb. 5. and up to the middle of March, engineers had removed 18 million litres of water. They will probably take another 18 million before the weather gets too warm.
“We’ll stay as long as it gets cold enough at night to make snow,” said Netterville.
The snow is piling up in an alfalfa field Westcan rented from a local farmer. So far, the hills are about 10 metres high.
The system is similar to snow-making operations on ski hills.
The waste water is transported at high pressure through atomizing nozzles mounted on towers.
Compressed air sprays fine droplets into the atmosphere. As the droplets freeze, the water is shaped into hexagonal shaped crystals about the size of a grain of salt.
Contaminants are separated from the water and are trapped in the centre of the frozen droplets. When the particles are shot into the air, a portion of the water is vaporized and the rest accumulates in a dense snowpack.
The hills don’t drift in winds because the snow is so heavy, said Netterville.
Apply to hog industry
Alberta Agriculture is studying the snowfluent method as a possible waste disposal system for hog farms.
A recent report said odors are noticeably reduced.
There is some initial odor during snow making but as the snowpack ages, the smell lessens.
In addition, most people wouldn’t notice what was going on because the best snow making conditions are at night or during cold weather when most people are inside, said the report.
The process reduces nitrogen and phosphorus by more than half. Most of the nitrogen is released into the air. Most bacteria are killed in the freezing process.
The meltwater shouldn’t be released into water bodies but it is suitable for reuse in barn flushing systems or applied to crops through irrigation.
In 1997 Swift Current installed a permanent snowfluent system to handle its waste water. The system treats 500,000 cubic metres of waste water annually.
