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Commercial specification

Commercial Hydroponic & Greenhouse Irrigation, Engineered for Continuous Duty

This page is written for the operator specifying equipment across hectares, not litres: multi-house CEA facilities, hydroponic production sites and agricultural investment programmes where the irrigation network is already built, already commissioned and not available for redesign. HERO Irrigation is specified into that constraint.

Quick answer

HERO Irrigation is a hydrogen nano-bubble irrigation system for commercial hydroponic and greenhouse operations. It retrofits inline into existing drip and fertigation networks without reconfiguring emitters, dosing or scheduling, covers drip-irrigation deployments up to approximately 10 hectares per unit, and is available at US$16,311 — DDP to selected destinations, DAP elsewhere — with multi-unit specification for larger sites.

Definition

What "commercial-grade" means here

The phrase is used loosely across the irrigation market, so it is worth defining precisely. In this catalogue it means three specific things.

Continuous duty. The unit is rated to run whenever irrigation runs — 24 hours a day through the season, not in short demonstration cycles. Hydrogen is produced on demand by PEM/SPE electrolysis at 99.99% purity, so output does not depend on a stored gas inventory and there is no cylinder logistics chain to manage.

Inline retrofit. The machine is installed on existing pipework as a single outlet-to-pipe connection on the pressurised main. It is not a tank system and not a batch treatment step.

No rebuild of the irrigation network. Emitters, drippers, manifolds, filter banks, dosing units and controller programmes stay as commissioned. Nothing in the hydraulic design has to be revisited to accommodate the unit.

Application

Where it fits

The intended environments are pressurised, scheduled and instrumented: commercial glasshouses, multi-hectare controlled-environment agriculture facilities, hydroponic production farms and substrate-grown protected cropping. These sites already run fertigation to setpoints and log water analysis, which is the operating context the system is designed around.

At the upper end of the intended buyer are 50 to 100+ hectare facilities and staged agricultural development programmes — the scale at which irrigation water is treated as infrastructure with a capital plan behind it rather than a consumable. Those projects are specified zone by zone as a multi-unit fleet, usually phased alongside the build programme, and are quoted with a written configuration per site.

Integration

How it integrates

One HERO Irrigation unit connects to existing pipework. The connection point sits on the pressurised main, downstream of filtration and upstream of the distribution manifold, with inlet pressure inside the 0.1–0.4 MPa band and 0–0.2 MPa at the outlet. Electrical supply is single-phase, 100–240 V ±15%, 800 W.

Because dissolved hydrogen does not change EC, pH or nutrient chemistry, there is no reconfiguration of emitters or drippers and no re-balancing of the network. Growers integrating with an active fertigation line should read the fertigation integration notes for dosing-point sequence and cycle timing.

Evidence

What has actually been recorded

Rice · Qingpu, Shanghai · 6 years

+18.8% average yield reported

A six-year hydrogen-rich water irrigation programme run with an industrial partner and an agricultural university reported an average yield increase of 18.8% across the programme, with reduced lodging and lower disease incidence reported alongside it.
Cherry tomato · South Korea · peer-reviewed

Controlled two-year trial

A peer-reviewed two-year controlled study reported yield and single-fruit weight significantly higher than a conventional-fertiliser control, with improved root-zone microbial activity measured in the same work.

Beyond those two, commercial glasshouse operators have reported outcomes across a 6–25% band. The distinction matters and is stated rather than blurred: the rice programme and the cherry-tomato study are long-running or peer-reviewed with disclosed methodology, while the commercial cases are real but self-reported, without published control groups or independent verification. They are cited as operator experience, not as data of equivalent standing. Read the full treatment on hydrogen water in agriculture.

Published research on hydrogen-rich irrigation water is early-stage and study-specific. Trial figures on this page are reported outcomes from the trials named, not projections for your site. No yield, disease, plant-health or therapeutic claims are made.

Scale

One unit, ten hectares — and how the fleet grows from there

A single unit covers drip-irrigation deployments up to approximately 10 hectares at 20 L/min and a recommended 6,000 L/day. Larger sites are not served by oversizing a single machine; they are served by placing multiple units at zone level, so each block keeps its own dissolved-hydrogen concentration at the emitter and a unit outage never takes the whole estate offline.

For multi-unit or multi-site programmes, Request Specification returns a written configuration — unit count, placement per zone, water-quality prerequisites, electrical requirements and a landed price to your destination port or gate under DDP or DAP terms as applicable. Single-unit orders can be placed directly online.

Questions

Commercial specification — FAQ

Can HERO Irrigation integrate with an existing commercial hydroponic system?
Yes. The unit is an inline device on the pressurised main: it takes water in, dissolves hydrogen into it at nano-bubble scale and returns it to the same pipe. Nutrient dosing, EC and pH control, filtration, disinfection and irrigation scheduling all remain exactly as commissioned. There is no requirement to change emitters, drippers, manifolds or controller programming, which is why the retrofit is normally a plumbing task rather than an irrigation-design task.
What size operation is one unit designed for?
One Model WZ-S unit delivers 20 L/min of hydrogen-enriched water at 3,000–5,000 ppb dissolved hydrogen, with a recommended flow capacity up to 6,000 L/day, and scales drip-irrigation deployments up to approximately 10 hectares. Larger estates are specified as a multi-unit installation — units sit on separate zones, blocks or houses rather than being manifolded into a single higher-capacity skid.
Does it require reconfiguring my current irrigation network?
No. The connection point is on the pressurised main, downstream of filtration and upstream of the distribution manifold, with inlet pressure in the 0.1–0.4 MPa band. Output pressure is 0–0.2 MPa. Because the unit does not alter bulk water chemistry, the network hydraulics, emitter selection and flush routine you already run stay valid.
What evidence supports the yield figures quoted for hydrogen-rich irrigation?
Two independently run trials carry the weight: a six-year rice programme at Qingpu, Shanghai, run with an industrial partner and an agricultural university, which reported an average yield increase of 18.8% with reduced lodging and disease incidence; and a peer-reviewed two-year controlled cherry-tomato study in South Korea, which reported yield and single-fruit weight significantly higher than a conventional-fertiliser control. Commercial glasshouse operators have separately reported outcomes in a 6–25% band, but those cases are self-reported and do not disclose control groups, so they are cited as commercial experience rather than as evidence of equivalent standing. No yield, disease or plant-health claim is made for any specific site.
How is a multi-hectare deployment specified?
By water demand rather than land area alone. The inputs are peak irrigation volume per zone, run-window length, source-water analysis (the unit requires potable, RO or distilled water at TDS ≤ 50 ppm, 5–40 °C), available connection points and single-phase electrical supply — the unit draws 800 W on 100–240 V ±15%. From that, unit count and placement are set per zone. Multi-unit and multi-site programmes are quoted through Request Specification, which returns a written configuration and a landed price per destination under DDP or DAP terms as applicable.
Is the unit rated for continuous seasonal operation?
Yes. It is a continuous-duty industrial machine in a stainless-steel cabinet, 550 × 350 × 970 mm, 83 kg including accessories, rated IP54 and CE/EMC (2014/30/EU) compliant, intended to run whenever the irrigation runs across the growing season. Hydrogen is generated on demand by PEM/SPE electrolysis at 99.99% purity, so no gas is stored on site.