Design, Development and Testing of Battery Electric Vehicle Sprayer

Abstract

To reduce the dependency on the fossil fuels a low-cost Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) sprayer was developed in the present investigation which has a boom sprayer attachment and battery electric vehicle as a prime mover. The developed system has high uniformity of spray, the spray distribution along with the swath and easy to adjust height of boom over a target crop. The developed BEV sprayer was tested in the laboratory and on the experimental field for optimization of the operating parameters for green gram crop. It was observed that an electric motor of 1 kW, 48 V, BLDC capable to propelled the vehicle. The forward speed studied for optimization of spray nozzles were 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 km/h and nozzles were tested at the operating pressures of 2.5, 3.0 and 3.5 kg/cm2 with orifice diameters of 0.6 mm, 0.8 mm, and 1.0 mm in the experimental field. The RSM results showed that the optimized performance of the sprayer with 0.8 mm orifice size nozzle on 3.0 kg/cm2 pressure and at a forward speed of 2.5 km/h for the green gram crop. The field tests were carried out on the optimized parameters it was observed that the effective field capacity of the sprayer was 1.09 ha/h with field efficiency of 79.81 per cent.