Study of Particle Size Distribution of Selected Material of Solid Fertilizer by Using Photo-Optical Image Analysis

Abstract

In many branches of industrial production, there is a need for continual monitoring of the quality of manufactured product. Such requirements arise in the production of fertilizers, as the physical and mechanical properties of fertilizers affect the quality of application provided by fertilizer spreaders. The aim of the presented paper was to compare the suitability and applicability of the photo-optical image analysis with the sieve analysis used for the determination of fertilizer particle size distribution. The photo-optical method was used by [1] to study the fertilizer particle size distribution. These researchers tried to measure the size and velocity of flying particles in relation to the quality of application of centrifugal spreaders. During our comparative experiments, we have compared the photo-optical image analysis and sieve analysis. In experiments, we used the samples of the granulated fertilizer NMgS produced by the Duslo, a.s. company. The sieve analysis was conducted according to the national standard STN EN 1235 in the laboratories of the Department of Machines and Production Systems at the Faculty of Engineering, Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra.