The technology we bring to the table is best described as break-through chemistry but humbly it is just vision, insight and perseverance that came to realization by fate. Forty-three years of individual experience, literally thousands of people and projects in a variety of market segments that contributed their knowledge and expertise of water. All of this compiled together since the year 2013 to deliver the industry this break-through technology.
Other shifts we as a society have experienced over the past few decades; email versus the fax, the internet, blue-tooth, Wi-Fi, social media, the cell phone, Facetime, social media, fake news and tele-conference. Here we are, HCT, presenting the shift in agronomy, anywhere we are growing vegetation. This is the short and to the point explanation. All statements can be validated scientifically, chemically and physically. Just about all this information can be seen and validated by reputable sources as well as through the internet if you know what to look for.
The Deliverables
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WaterSOLV™ Curative – Organically inhibited and catalyzed acid - Conversion of water hardness, soil bound and crystalized hardness and nutrition into high grade, non-scale forming, available nutrition. Displacing sulfuric acid and the need for gypsum. Cost equivalent to that of sulfuric acid with and end user ROI of at least 1:1.
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Disassociate chloride from sodium and calcium, while rendering sodium inert, non-toxic and non-damaging to plant cells. An inherent trait of all three of our solutions Curative, BC and AG).
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WaterSOLV™ BC – Organically inhibited and catalyzed peroxide – By managing bacteria levels in the water, the potential for colonies of detrimental anaerobic bacteria in the soils and root zones are mitigated. Without damage to organic matter and degrading to dissolved oxygen (continuous chemical aerification) and water.
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WaterSOLV™ AG – where hardness is not a problem, where sodium and chloride are, WaterSOLV™ AG provides the necessary treatment without the need for the storing acids.
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Trickle Down Impacts: Restored Infiltration, CEC, SAR – Harvesting existing and rendering continuously available hydration and nutrition regardless of pH – Overcoming biological issues relating to bacteria, colonies and the slimes they produce, which contribute to suffocation and toxification of vegetation from the biological wastes and gasses – Creating an aerobic soil profile – Line cleaning, Snail and Mollusk Remediation – Water and nutritional use efficiency – Crop vitality, pest resistance, yield volume and product grade – Lower costs, higher ROI.
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Sustainable Chemistry and Chemical Reactions.
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Empirical / Reproducible Results at every application when utilized as prescribed. Treatments are continuous with water, linear to hardness and bicarbonates along with total bacteria where bacteria food sources are prevalent.
Introduction
Vegetation vitality is usually measured visually by leaf size, health, pest resistance, crop yield and quality. When the crop has problems, it is usually presented visually by leaves and harvest. When there is a visual challenge other than pests, we do tissue analyses, followed with soil and water analyses.
Traditionally we add nutrients with water to the soil so that the plant, through hydration, can pick up the constituents and utilize them for producing optimum yields and health/vitality. When we find deficiencies in the tissue, we tend to add more with water by any means possible to get the plant to take in the nutrition. When our tissue samples are still deficient, we try to find ways to make the nutrients more available to the plant utilizing wetting agents, surfactants, flushing salts, or reducing pH values. These methods all have feasibility but to what extent short term, long term and at what costs or what values, short and long term? Without constant testing, what is the total vitality potential and ROI?
Constituents are what we refer to as the overall minerals and metals of nutrition, which are basic elements like calcium magnesium, potassium, potash, sulfur, iron, manganese, zinc, etc. Water contains most of these constituents but usually not in a sufficient quantity to sustain crop growth. Therefore, we apply additional constituents, in various blends/formulas, the amount necessary to sustain the crop demands.
What we usually begin to experience is the transportation of our nutrients into the plant and to the leaf becomes more challenging. Additionally, we notice infiltration of water and nutrition into our soils and root zones has become less, water puddling on the surface, more “black matter / root rot, red matter / iron bacteria, grey matter / manganese bacteria, and we’re spending a lot more money on fungicides and pest control. Additionally, we see calcium deficiency in our crops, yet a buildup of calcium in our soils, which is followed with escalating levels of constituents in our soils - toxic sodium, toxic chloride, iron, sulfur-iron- manganese which are all food sources for detrimental bacteria, nitrate, zinc, copper, and boron. This is clear indications of compromised infiltration when sodium and zinc are extremely soluble in both good and bad water quality.
Water is supposed to be the solvent that hydrates and also carries our nutrition into the plant. Our plants are what they can take up. Plants take up what they are feed. Of our water is good, and it contains oxygen, and little bacteria, and it is available to the plant with the proper nutrients, when the plant needs them, you observe plant vitality. Based on the physical size and solubility of nutrients, the plant will take up what’s easier to take in. The easier nutrients, technically the most soluble and re-hydratable are zinc and sodium, the least are calcium and phosphate. There’s a lot more to it but some of the main reactions here are minerals in water (TDS/EC), when evaporated to dryness, from scale – just like water spots on a glass or silverware. Scale is a complex of the minerals and bicarbonate. As scale, it is not available nutrition, it is bigger and heavier, much more difficult for the plant to break down and consume. Adding acid, we dissolve the scale and gas off the bicarbonate forming available nutrients. The problem is that acidified scale will evaporate to an even denser, insoluble scale, which is what we observe building up year over year on our soils and which was proven through a study by UC Davis.
None of the analyses; water, soil or tissue, are looking at the oxygen content we are making available to the plant. Are we to assume the plant does not need to uptake oxygen from the root zones versus intake oxygen from the pedals? And what about soil biology, the aerobic versus anaerobic soil profiles at the root interfaces?
Constituents
What we have in our water, soil, tissue analyses and fertilizers, HCT categorizes uniquely. We also stress that we should start looking at the fate of products we put onto our soils, especially in the markets where we use the same soils over and over again, versus the potted or boxed plant industry. This same recommendation / concern, exists with pond water treatment. If the overall fate of the products we add are not utilized, they can buildup and cause expense and/or compromised vitality.
Built up in soil means the ratio of constituent in the source water compared to the ratio in the soil. If zinc and sodium are excessively high ratios to the source water, we know we are accumulating hem due to compromised infiltration. Aerifying and creating a sand layer in just creating a new growing surface while covering the problem. The underlying problem can still be rectified if it is cementation. However, if the underlying problem is biological, keep in mind bacteria populate exponentially and the underlying problem can become very troublesome, costly and timely to overcome.
Nutritional Availability
Just because the nutrients are in the water or in the soil, doesn’t mean they are available. If it is deficient in the plant, present in the soil and water, we have an uptake problem.
NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE
Available Nutrition is usually compromised from;
A. Cementation – The accumulation of scale from cations complexed with bicarbonates/carbon dioxide. Case and Point: scale is the physical form of TDS and EC. Take high TDS water, evaporate the water, you get scale, “not particulates of cations”, but hard, insoluble scale that will not re-hydrate with water, even with RO water!
Do yourself a visual – fill a glass beaker with 3 inches of your treated or untreated water (or one of each). Let it evaporate to dryness. Try to rehydrate the scale to rinse free. If it rinses free it would be considered rehydratable to TDS/EC as available nutrition. But if it does not rehydrate, it becomes scale. Where continual watering and evaporation to dryness will form cementation. This is commonly observed problematic after 3 years of sulfuric acid use, after 6 years of N-pHuric use. Reason is, and proven by a UC Davis Study, the evaporative salts of strong acids are not dissolved by strong acids – until now with the development of WaterSOLV™ Curative.
The second visual - add water to the scaled beaker and add some acid. What you’ll see is a reaction of bubbles. This is the scale crystals releasing the bicarbonate and the minerals & metals going back into solution – now available nutrition - until consumed or until evaporated to dryness again where it will become a denser, less soluble scale – like the difference between quartz (insoluble) and calcite (soluble).
If you’re experiencing problems with vitality or brown spots, and when the soil is fairly dry you are not able to sink a 1 inch probe 6 or more inches into the ground, for us, it’s not a SAR or CEC issue, it’s a cementation issue – carbonate bound cations of minerals and nutrients - even if you’re on clay.
Additionally, the buildup of sulfur, sulfate, iron or manganese, with added bacteria from your water source(s), will perpetuate colonies of black, red and gray matter, and their associated slimes – which are resistant to acids, fungicides, fertilizers and most wetting agents, hindering infiltration.
What HCT will do here is utilize WaterSOLV™ Curative, an organically inhibited and catalyzed acid solution exchanging the bicarbonate with quazi amino acetates, glycolates and other proprietary ingredients. What once was scale is now never to scale again, high grade nutrition, whether evaporated to dryness or not, rehydrates to TDS regardless of pH and to TDS values exceeding 200,000 mg/l (two hundred thousand). Impossible, not hardly – urine is typically total TDS and can get as high and higher. We do this with the minerals in water, as well as harvesting the complexed minerals, crystals and bound nutrients in the soil – which leads us to the term watering to water versus watering to flush. With restored infiltration, sodium chloride, calcium chloride, zinc, copper and boron should not accumulate in the soils profile.
Chemical protonation renders the sodium inert, non-cell damaging, like how our body handles sodium, now our plants do the same. Both chloride and bicarbonates degass.
B. Biology – A similar chain of reaction, where one bacterium from water can be transferred to the soil through watering, with the right conditions of nutrients, that bacterium can readily replicate exponentially and become colonies of bacteria. Not only are the colonies a problem hindering infiltration, the transportation of nutrition and oxygen with water, when threatened with anything including rain water, they can produce (and usually do) polysaccharides which are bio-films that are impervious to pretty much everything including extremely strong acids, low pH values, algaecides and fungicides, hence the successes of selective bacterium’s to break down the slimes.
But there is a better solution utilizing the power and efficacy of WaterSOLV™ BC – an organically inhibited and catalyzed peroxide;
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React peroxide against the water bacteria thereby preventing their formation of colonies in the soil
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Add additional product to overcome the colonies in the soil
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The degradation products generate much desired dissolved oxygen into the soil, without oxidizing organic matter
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The product contains much needed sugars for crop nutritional value (glycolates, dextrose, glucose)
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The product contains much needed chemistry for remediating sodium, calcium and chloride.
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The synergy of Curative and BC use at the same time creates secondary chemical reactions referred to as catalyzed which makes the use efficacy and the use costs more than economical where the typical ROI is greater than 1:1 in favor of the grower.
The Proof: We can do all of this with 1/10th the amount of 94% sulfuric acid, 1/20th the amount of N-pHuric, stop adding gypsum, humic and or fulvic acids, and at a lower cost. Additionally, we can come in contact with the acid and it will not burn our skin. The products do not contain any urea so you are not adding unwanted nitrogen to your soils. The bi-products and environmental fate of the ingredients are completely sustainable.
Answers to Common Questions
Form of Product: Liquids in pails, drums, totes and tankers
Use Rates: Curative is 1/10th 98% sulfuric - 1/20th N-pHuric
BC is from 1 qt. to 1.75 gallons per million gallons of water (ppm – mg/L)
Technically – Curative is applied linear to Total Hardness + Total Bicarbonates divided by 200 = ppm of Curative for the treatment of water. Add additional ppm to initiate the curation of soils.
Excessive amounts may be used for rapid curation, with limitations (see your supplier or contact HCT).
BC is applied linear to the exponents of total bacteria where when excessive food source of sulfur, sulfate iron or manganese exist, the total exponent of total bacteria times 0.25 = ppm of BC. Excessive amounts may be used for rapid curation, with limitations (see your supplier or contact HCT).
Both products used in combination at prescribed rates are more effective.
Can the Products be Mixed? At dilutions into 50% or greater of water, yes. As concentrates, diluted in less than 50% water, NO.
Storage: Haz Mat
Handling: Haz Mat
Corrosive / Oxidative: Yes
Hazardous to the skin like sulfuric?
Curative acid - No, does not harm the skin. BC Peroxide, No, but if adequately rinsed with water.
Cost: About the same “Use cost” as Sulfuric or N-pHuric.
Replaces: Sulfuric, N-pHuric, Sulfur Burner, Gypsum, methods and associated costs of pushing sodium and chloride away from root zones, the need for flushing salts (power, water, resources).
Benefits: Plant and product vitality, yield, heat tolerance and resistivity combined with enhanced efficiencies and ROI’s.
Topical & Foliar Applications: Yes, but not best or most economical method. Good for testing if needed.
Equipment needed for pumping: Compatible with 34% H2O2 or HCl. (See HCT for options).
Zebra, Quagga Mussels, Asiana Snails: We gradually dissolve the active and inactive shells into high grade nutrition.
Compatible with existing equip.: May require dilution with water to meet the minimum pump output capacity where
we output 0.25 to 6 ppm, and minimum output pumps with sulfuric is around 18 ppm.
Visual Results: Dependent on soil conditions, rate of product application and time of year. Usually predictable after reviewing soil analyses and defining treatment rates – typically 60-120 days but may be lessened with increased treatment rates.