The earth is a powerful tool and Next Generation Farming, a unit of Smart Cannabis (OTCPK:SCNA), has figured out yet another use for it. You maky think of geothermal as to how it is used in energy (geothermal power) or heating and air conditioning (using the ground as a heat source or heat sink), but if your in the legal marijuana cultivation business, you may find use for it in cleaning your air too.
Next Generation Farming's filtered Geothermal Air Recirculation System continually cycles, dehumidifies, and filters air from within a greenhouse.
It does so by pulling air from the greenhouse into a closed-loop ground heat exchange system. As the air travels through a weaving loop of underground high-density polyethylene tubes, water condenses and the air is dehumidified.
The inner surface of the HDPE pipes can be treated with antimicrobial epoxy that wipes out odor-causing bacteria. After passing through a carbon filter, the air is ultimately recirculated back into the greenhouse with reduced odor, spores, terpenes and other particulate.
The Sacramento, California-based upstart said that it sold one of its units to an anonymous cannabis cultivation site in Salinas, California, with installation scheduled for this month. Smart Cannabis said the sale is worth over $250,000.
The system will not only help provide clean air for the greenhouse (and its plants and workers), it could also help relations with neighbors. An Inside Edition story in November 2017, titled "High School Smells Like Pot From Nearby Greenhouses," briefly detailed how odor from marijuana greenhouses are wafting into a nearby school, irritating some students and teachers with the skunky smell.
Smart Cannabis CEO and president John Taylor says that the system can be implemented with new greenhouse construction or as a retrofit to an existing greenhouse. "When we innovate, we aim to scale so that needs we're responding to can potentially serve our entire database of clients," said Taylor in a press release Wednesday morning on the system sale.
After closing Tuesday at 5.82 cents, shares of SCNA gapped ahead Wednesday morning following the news to seven cents. The stock has cooled off since, slipping back to 6.03 cents for a gain of 3.6% about an hour and 45 minutes into the trading day.
