Abstract
We report the experimental results of tests aimed at assessing the effects of different settings on the mean radius of mineral fertilizer distribution using a disc fertilizer spreader. Our aim was to improve the performance of fertilizer distribution in sustainable agriculture. Three types of mineral fertilizers with different physical characteristics, commonly used in agriculture, were considered: urea, calcium ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate. A complete randomization method based on a four-factor experimental model was used to study the influence of the functional and operational parameters on the mean radius of fertilizer spread. Fixed model analysis of variance showed that fertilizer type, vane configuration and disc angular velocity explained 91.74% of the variance of the spread mean radius, while linear multiple regression analysis highlighted that the fertilizer dust fraction and disc angular velocity had an overall effect of 82.72%, the former showing an inverse correlation as high as 72.77%.
Highlights
The most common method for distributing dry mineral fertilizer is with a fertilizer spreader.In a sustainable framework, economic and political aspects have to be considered in order to achieve the best possible maintenance of environmental and natural resources [1,2,3]
If we consider the remaining two variables (specific density (SD) and vane configuration (VC)), we find that their overall contribution to the variance in mean radius of fertilizer spread was only 1.64%, to which specific density SD makes a negligible contribution (0.00177%)
The present study shows, by the fertilizer spread mean radius fixed model analysis of variance, that the feed point on the disc has a very marginal role in the mineral fertilizer spreading process while the other functional and operational parameters together explain 91.74% of the variance of the dependent variable
Summary
The most common method for distributing dry mineral fertilizer is with a fertilizer spreader.In a sustainable framework, economic and political aspects have to be considered in order to achieve the best possible maintenance of environmental and natural resources [1,2,3]. A sustainable economy requires the conservation and maintenance of the natural soil environment [4,5], in which the leading objective must be improvement of soil sorption properties and the maximum possible increase in humus content, which is influenced among other things by the soil cultivation method [6,7]. Many aspects of this issue depend on the plant cultivation technology, the subsequent processing phase [8,9,10] and how biomass used for energy production is stored [11,12,13]. A major technical problem in agriculture, directly related to increasing production in sustainable agriculture, is optimization of the construction of agricultural machinery to increase its reliability and efficiency
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