# Ozone Nanobubble Treatment of Open Water Irrigation Sources for Improved Food Safety and Plant Health

> **NIH FDA R44** · EN SOLUCION, INC. · 2024 · $1,022,907

## Abstract

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeks to address concerns about foodborne illness
outbreaks linked to irrigation from untreated surface water via a proposed revision to the Food
Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule. The rule change addresses the threat to
public health from the foodborne illness outbreaks that continue to occur with high frequency in
certain produce commodities. It is widely believed that the root cause of the outbreaks is the
proximity of animal feed lots to surface water used for irrigation, necessitating the sanitization of
the water to ensure delivery of pathogen-free water to crops. Growers, however, currently lack
viable mitigation tools to comply with the impending regulatory change. The primary solution today
is to use furrow irrigation to avoid contact between water and plant leaves and to prohibit
application of overhead irrigation 3 weeks prior to harvest. Current, but infrequently employed,
sanitization solutions include treating irrigation water with environmentally damaging chemicals
like chlorine or implementing cost prohibitive technological solutions. En Solución proposes a
cost-effective, easily implemented, chemical and residual-free irrigation water treatment system
that utilizes ozone nanobubbles to neutralize pathogens. Ozone, in both its gaseous and aqueous
phases, is generally recognized as safe by the FDA and has been shown to effectively reduce
microbial contamination in waste water; however, certain engineering and efficiency challenges
have prevented its use in high-volume, high-flow applications like irrigation water treatment.
Unlike traditional macro-sized bubbles from existing technologies, the nanobubbles produced by
En Solución’s technology have the remarkable ability to remain stable in high concentrations for
months at a time and allow for high gas infusion rates and retention times. As a result, more ozone
is kept in the solution, greatly enhancing the concentration of ozone able to be delivered
throughout an irrigation system. The technology developed by En Solución also has implications
on plant productivity and soil health, as hyper-oxygenated water (a byproduct of the decay of
ozone nanobubbles in the irrigation water) has been demonstrated to stimulate plant and root
growth. During the Phase II project, En Solución will develop a commercial-scale ozone
nanobubble irrigation unit that will easily integrate into existing field irrigation infrastructure to
provide continuous sanitization for surface water applied to field crops. The technology will be
fully validated via independent university study and demonstrated at full scale in a pilot
implementation at an operating farm.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11063768
- **Project number:** 2R44FD007703-02
- **Recipient organization:** EN SOLUCION, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** DIRK THIELE
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** FDA
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $1,022,907
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2022-09-20 → 2026-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11063768

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11063768, Ozone Nanobubble Treatment of Open Water Irrigation Sources for Improved Food Safety and Plant Health (2R44FD007703-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11063768. Licensed CC0.

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