A capacitive type of electrostatic spraying nozzle

Abstract

Many toxic pesticides are dispensed to protect food crops from pests in farm fields. Greater than 90% of pesticides are commonly applied as aqueous-based sprays. When dispensed with conventional nozzles, a large portion of the spray is often lost as airborne drifts of droplets. In addition, there is a lack of deposition onto the plants due to the rapid gravitational settling of droplets beneath the soil surface. Thus, target deposition efficiencies poorer than 25% are often encountered in agricultural pesticides. Electrostatic spraying technology offers a very favorable means of increasing pesticide droplet deposition onto biological surfaces of living crops. More than a doubling in efficiency is a reasonable goal. In this paper, a new capacitive type of electrostatic spraying nozzle, which utilizes a ring induction electrode installed on the outside of a nozzle frame cone and a pulsed voltage, is proposed and studied experimentally. The results of this study indicate that the proposed capacitive type of electrostatic spraying nozzle exhibits a large current deposition of aqueous sprays on the sample target. Thus, it has promise to be applied as an effective electrostatic spraying nozzle.