Agricultural Spray Research Articles

Primary breakup of liquid fan sheet in crossflow

This paper presents the primary breakup of liquid sheet under the influence of crossflow. The atomization of liquid sheets is important for many applications, e.g., agricultural sprays, fuel atomization, and spray coatings, among others. The aerodynamic effects on the liquid breakup process is investigated experimentally to identify the breakup regime transitions. A subsonic wind tunnel was used to simulate the crosswind effects on flat fan nozzle spray. Two flat fan nozzles sizes were tested in this study. High-speed digital imaging technique was used to measure the breakup regime transitions, the location of the end of the liquid core, the breakup time, the location, and size of droplets at onset of breakup and the spray trajectory. The results were correlated using phenomenological analyses. The aerodynamic effects were responsible for initiating bag breakup and reducing the droplet sizes which are susceptible to drift. This would be problematic for spraying herbicides in windy conditions.

Research on Modeling and Control Algorithm of Self-Balancing Platform of Spraying Robot

In order to improve the driving stability of the tracked vehicle robot with agricultural spray in mountainous complex terrain, an automatic leveling device of the medicine box was designed to adjust the center of gravity of the tracked vehicle during driving by controlling the sidle Angle of the tracked vehicle. Because in the spraying process, the liquid in the medicine box is constantly reduced, which produces a certain load disturbance to the control system. In this paper, an adaptive controller is designed based on the mathematical model of self-balancing platform. Experiments in Matlab/Simulink show that the control method can effectively control the system.

A Review of the Current Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Sprayer Applications in Precision Agriculture

Highlights A comprehensive review of the current Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Sprayer in precision agriculture applications. Comparison of manned and unmanned aerial sprayers in precision agriculture. Latest developments of commercialized UAV sprayers available on the market. Abstract. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more broadly used for improving agricultural spraying applications. However, compared with the nearly 100 years of data accumulated on manned aerial applications, UAV sprayers are relatively new, and associated technologies are in the early stages of development. The objective of this paper is to give a comprehensive review of the current UAV spraying platforms with a comparison to manned aerial sprayers and a discussion of their application, performance, and efficiency. A total of 213 peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles, extension papers, government websites, and company websites were reviewed and cited in this study. We also discuss factors that could influence the effectiveness of aerial spraying applications, such as release height, wind speed, vortex strength, and droplet size. Finally, we review the latest UAV sprayers available worldwide and present technology gaps in those platforms. We highlight areas that require improvement, particularly in autonomous navigational controllers and spraying systems. Keywords: Droplet distribution, Plant protection, Precision agriculture, Spot spraying, UAV sprayer.

DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF IOT BASED SOLAR POWERED BATTERY OPERATED SPRAY ROVER

A farm's spraying operation is crucial. Pesticides are sprayed on plants to protect them from insect assault. Farmers still use the old-fashioned hand pump method to spray insecticides on their crops. Although it's crucial to produce high-quality plants that yield more and to turn a healthy profit, we also care about farmer safety. Health problems are caused by these insecticides. In comparison to drones, it is less effective for longer distances and costs more, making it unaffordable for small-scale farmers. They participated manually and carried their sprayer for fertiliser on their shoulders. Farmers get health problems as a result of fertiliser inhalation while they are spraying. Farmers typically utilise a hand-operated spray pump or fuel for spraying. Due to the construction's excessive weight and practical impracticality in hell, the usual spraying results in injuries or weariness for the user. This inspires scientists to create and simulate a solar-powered spray machine. We provide our projects as a remedy for the aforementioned agricultural issues. Another goal of this design is to eliminate vibration while still employing a gasoline-operated spray pump, overcome handling-related casualties when performing spraying, and create an environmentally friendly spray machine by removing fuel. Farmers can spray pesticides at a fixed or adjustable height with the aid of an agricultural spray rover.

Fertilizers disrupt the electric feel of flowers

Electricity is literally all around us. As humans, we generate weak electric fields whenever we move our muscles; spiders use static electricity in the air to fly across great distances; and geckos use static in their sticky feet to scale vertical walls with ease. Since everything has an electric field, we can imagine that this fundamental force of nature plays an important role in many ecological interactions. Among insects, bumblebees are known to alter the static electricity of flowers to communicate with members of their hive; the positive charge that collects on their tiny hairs alters the electric field around a visited flower for ∼100 s, communicating to the next bee that buzzes by that the nectar and pollen rewards from that flower have already been exhausted. Ellard Hunting and colleagues from University of Bristol, UK, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA, set out to test whether the application of agricultural sprays alters the electric field of flowers and whether bumblebees can detect these disruptions.The pervasive use of chemicals in agriculture is a substantial source of pollution. But besides chemical toxicity, little is known about how agrochemicals otherwise affect plant–pollinator interactions. Hunting and colleagues observed that bumblebees tend to hover around chemically treated flowers and decide not to land. To investigate the cause of this avoidance behaviour, the researchers developed a computational model for how the application of agricultural sprays may alter floral electric fields up to 4 cm from the flower. Their model considered how the presence of droplets on the flower's surface and localized increases in humidity from a spray application might impact the flower's electric field.Next, the researchers studied the effect of common agricultural fertilizers on flower features that bees recognize. To see if fertilizer sprays change the way bees see flowers, the researchers determined what wavelengths of light are reflected from droplets with and without fertilizers added. To study whether fertilizer sprays change the way flowers smell, they measured how much effort the bees put into feeding when offered sugar water laced with fertilizer compared with just sugar water. Lastly, to visualize the electric fields surrounding various blooms, the scientists sprayed charged coloured powder particles onto the centre of ragwort flowers and observed how the powder distributed across the surfaces. Although the fertilizers did not affect how bees see or smell flowers, the chemicals did alter the electric field around each bloom for several minutes.Next, Hunting and colleagues tested whether the adverse effects of spray applications persist over time. To do this, they planted electrodes into the cut stems of potted lavender and Texas bluebell plants and recorded the electrical current streaming down the stems in response to different spray applications. While a water spray caused a change in current that only lasted 30–60 s, a spray containing the fertilizer caused a consistent change in current that lasted up to 16 min. A spray with another common agricultural chemical – the pesticide Imidacloprid – induced a change in current that lasted up to 25 mins. Even subsequent water sprays, simulating rain, produced prolonged changes in the plant stem's electrical signature, suggesting that this effect can endure even after a single application of fertilizer.Finally, the researchers observed wild bumblebees foraging on cut flowers with artificially applied electric fields to mimic the effect of fertilizers. They pierced lavender stems with metal electrodes, placed them in glass jars of tap water, and attached a 13 V battery to produce an electric current in the plant. By recording 2 h videos and counting the number of bumblebees that approached versus those that landed on the lavender, the team showed that bumblebees somehow sense weird electricity as they approach a flower and land less as a result, serving as a healthy reminder that as humans we affect our environments in ways we can't even sense.

DROPLET SIZE DISTRIBUTION PARAMETERIZATION FOR FLAT FAN SPRAYS OF AGRICULTURAL TANK MIXTURES

In agricultural spray application of pesticides, the volumetric droplet size distribution (VDSD) critically influences the efficacy of the application as well as the risk of off-target spray deposition. It is critical to have accurate predictions of the VDSD for development of new agrochemicals and spray nozzles. VDSD parameterization and subsequent prediction is complicated in agrochemical sprays by the unique geometries of the nozzles employed, which typically do not have clearly evident hydraulic diameters and vary in size, as well as by the effects of active herbicides and adjuvants on the spray. Herein, scaling based on conservation of energy is utilized to develop a relationship predicting the VDSD for flat fan sprays used in agrochemical application with agrochemical products. To examine the proposed scaling relationship, we made measurements of VDSDs using laser diffraction interferometry for agriculturally relevant tank mixtures, including active pesticides and both emulsion-forming and rheology-modifying drift control adjuvants, sprayed with complex geometry, flat fan nozzles typical of field application. We show that for three distinct nozzle types and three tank mixtures (nine combinations), VDSDs can be normalized by the Sauter mean diameter (<i>D<sub>32</sub></i>), and normalized distributions collapse for given nozzle type-spray tank mix combination. Subsequently, we show for all test combinations that the Sauter mean diameter normalized by the nozzle hydraulic diameter (<i>D<sub>H</sub></i>) scales with the ratio of product of tank mix surface tension and hydraulic diameter divided by the nozzle pressure drop, with a scaling exponent of 1/3.

Wind Tunnels and Their Uses to Study Variables Affecting Precision Applications of Agricultural Sprays

Highlights Wind tunnels were extensively used to study precision applications of agricultural sprays. Use of wind tunnels significantly contributed to the broad-reaching impact of precision applications. Wind tunnels provide controlled conditions to study a plethora of wide ranging spray variables. Abstract.The objective of this study was to review publications that were representative of wind tunnels and their uses to study variables affecting precision applications of agricultural sprays. Precision application involved the deliberate engineering of sprayers for accurate formation and dispersal of droplets and sprays to enhance spray deposits on targeted crop, foliage, or pest for increased agricultural production with reduced adverse effects to neighboring ecology and the environment. Categorical themes of wind tunnel uses were (1) spray atomization, (2) adjuvant effects, (3) spray drift, (4) spray, air movement, crop foliage interactions, (5) UAV applications, (6) airflow around sprayer, and (7) spray test methods and collections. A discovery was that nozzle design had more impact on droplet size than spray formulation, which emphasized the importance of spray nozzle selection for atomization, and that air induction (AI) venturi nozzles consistently provided reduced spray drift potential. On occasion, some adjuvants marketed as drift reduction agents acted in an opposite manner and decreased droplet size. Wind tunnel use for spray drift had the broadest range of variables studied among conceptual applications and included various nozzles, boom height, product active ingredients, adjuvants, and other variables. Deposits decreased in foliage from upper, middle, to lower foliage heights and decreased with increased wind speed. Low wind turbulence in the canopy did not contribute to deposition. Foliage deposition depended more on droplet size and local ambient winds. Canopy porosity limited the droplet size to less than 100 µm for contribution to deposits internal to the foliage. Wind tunnel use for UAV applications was mostly focused on spray drift for UAV variables such as rotor configurations and payload for mounted or tethered UAV. An ultimate recommendation was to use AI nozzles, reduce application speed, and to use a suitable adjuvant – which was similar to other applications. Contrasting results for the impact of airflow around sprays were reported for vortices around fan spray discharge of a nozzle versus a 4-nozzle boom study that found no differences in velocity and turbulence fields due to the presence or no presence of spray discharge. Spray test methods and collections determined in wind tunnels primarily focused on collection efficiencies for a wide range of spray collectors. Collection efficiencies varied with collector and droplet size. Keywords: Keywords.,Boom sprayer,Droplet size,Droplet trajectory,Nozzle classification,Spray deposit,Spray drift,Spray nozzles.

Turkish Migratory Beekeepers’ Opinions Towards the Current State and Problems of Apiculture Sector: A Descriptive Study in Afyonkarahisar

This research was carried out to examine the opinions of the migratory beekeepers in Afyonkarahisar regarding the current situation and problems of the sector. A total of 37 items were assembled under four subgroups in the questionnaire to collect the research data. The questionnaire was applied through face-to-face interviews with beekeepers during the visits to the apiaries of the enterprises. The migratory beekeepers emphasized that marketing is the most crucial problem. They stressed that the marketing assembled with a small number of intermediary companies and the labeling not based on branding and quality standards reduce the retail price of bee products. Other significant problems were unannounced agricultural pesticide spraying, increasing decline in the flora of honey plants, high equipment costs, and the lack of specific legislation for migratory beekeeping. Also, it has been stated that there were challenges in obtaining quality queen bees, finding location areas and meeting the living needs on the migration route, and accessing training on topics such as bee diseases, organic beekeeping, and Apitherapy. As a result, it has been concluded that supporting migratory beekeepers with good input and marketing management, regulations that will facilitate migration and beekeeper accommodation, and policies to increase product quality and bee health can significantly contribute to improving their capacity to adapt to innovative and competitive national strategies to be developed for beekeeping in the future.

Design and development of agricultural spraying system

The majority of the sprayer pumps available in the current market are back-mounted, hand pumps that are used to spray pesticides. Although tractor-mounted sprayers are presently available on market are seen to use 10 sets of nozzles to spray the pesticide is very demanding on pesticide consumption leading to pesticide wastage, and subsequent soil and water pollution. This paper focused on the development of an agriculture sprayer with an appropriate pesticide application mechanism that would apply the pesticide directly to the plant foliage, and fruits with minimal wastage thereby making effective pest control and so also reducing pesticide consumption which will aid to reduce spraying cost per acre and more importantly reduce the probability of soil and water pollution. Oscillating Nozzle Agriculture Sprayer is an innovative solution to the above-mentioned problem where four nozzles with oscillating action cover maximum plant foliage area, with effect reach, application of Italian nozzles adds to proper atomization of spray and effective application is attained through the combination of the nozzle and oscillating arm action. The system has been designed, manufactured, and tested in actual conditions. Field test results showed that the cost of spray saved annually is around 25–30% of the pesticide cost for existing tractor-mount spraying mechanisms.

Design and Fabrication of Multi-Utility Spraying UAV

Spraying of pesticides manually causes many side effects to individuals life. The exposure can cause many health effects. In the current study an agriculture drone is designed and fabricated for mapping an agricultural field, spraying pesticides and monitoring crop health. This UAV reduces the time and labor cost. The Agri drone is capable of mapping agricultural field of different terrains and spray pesticides for different kinds of plants as per requirementin autonomous mode via an Agri Assistant software.The UAV is tested for its range & endurance and has a flight time of about 13 minutes. The UAV is also capable of eliminating 90% of pesticides by effective spraying. Such UAVs are useful for various purposes other than agricultural spraying such as mapping and sanitization.

Production of Solar-powered Quad-copter for Agricultural Field Spraying

To meet the requirements of ultra-low space flight in pesticide spraying applications, a quadcopter with independent attitude control was proposed. It is a new product of a miniature quadcopter aircraft powered by solar cells. The innovation of this study was the adoption of circular frame structure, which increases the laying area of solar panels. The solar energy is used to convert lithium battery power supply to increase the altitude during navigation. Describes in detail the selection of components and the assembly process of this quadcopter, and conducts a test flight of the quadcopter. on this basis, the flight test was carried out. From the fight results the performance indicators of the quadcopter meet the design requirements. This research has a positive effect on the development of farm operation devices

Drop Impact onto a Substrate Wetted by Another Liquid: Flow in the Wall Film

The impact of a drop onto a liquid film is relevant for many natural phenomena and industrial applications such as spray painting, inkjet printing, agricultural sprays, or spray cooling. In particular, the height of liquid remaining on the substrate after impact is of special interest for painting and coating but also for applications involving heat transfer from the wall. While much progress has been made in explaining the hydrodynamics of drop impact onto a liquid film of the same liquid, the physics of drop impact onto a wall film with different material properties is still not well understood. In this study, drop impact onto a very thin liquid film of another liquid is investigated. The thickness of the film remaining on a substrate after drop impact is measured using a chromatic-confocal line sensor. It is interesting that the residual film thickness does not depend on the initial thickness of the wall film, but strongly depends on its viscosity. A theoretical model for the flow in the drop and wall film is developed which accounts for the development of viscous boundary layers in both liquids. The theoretical predictions agree well with the experimental data.

Smartphone image-based framework for quick, non-invasive measurement of spray characteristics

Agricultural spray nozzles are small yet key components for delivering agrochemicals to the target surface. Their complexity demands specific assessment to guarantee the spray quality. The traditional equipment measures spray characteristics accurately; however, it can be time-consuming and invasive. An emerging method for agricultural assessments is image processing. Therefore, our goal was to develop an innovative smartphone image-based framework to analyze spray characteristics (angle, single distribution and solid stream jets) and detect poor spray nozzles under indoor or outdoor environments. We used flat fan and hollow cone nozzles, with three sizes and three working pressures. A mobile phone with 12 MP was used to capture spray images. The images were automatically stored and processed using a cloud computing platform. Spray angle was estimated by finding edges in binary images and using Hough transform function. Single spray distribution shape was characterized by extracting the pixel grayscale value profile across a horizontal line in three regions of the image. Finally, solid stream jets were detected using a function to calculate grayscale peaks. The actual spray characteristics were measured using an automatic horizontal patternator with 120 collectors (25 mm grooves). As a result, image-based spray angle mean absolute error (MAE) and mean absolute percentual error (MAPE) were 4.45º and 4.40%, respectively, leading to an underestimation in most cases. Specific regions of the image accurately resembled the measured spray distribution shape, except for hollow cone nozzles when working at low pressures. Moreover, solid stream jets were correctly detected at three different flow rates. Our framework was validated for both indoor (laboratory) and outdoor (field) conditions and had similar results in detecting poor spray nozzles. The only restriction was the combination low/medium pressures with small nozzle sizes. Therefore, our insights absolutely contribute for quick, non-invasive measurements of spray nozzles characteristics through a digital approach and open pathways towards affordable and flexible methods for agricultural assessments.

AI-enabled droplet detection and tracking for agricultural spraying systems

This work leverages recent advancements in computer vision and deep learning to detect and track the motion of droplets captured by a camera. While classical computer vision techniques have been employed for detection and tracking, those approaches have limitations and are not trivially extended to droplets. We approach the problems of droplet detection and tracking through a data-driven framework, in which an annotated database of droplet images is built and object detection and tracking models are trained on this database. The accuracy of the model is evaluated and the whole process is discussed. At this point, droplet geometric properties can be extracted. This information is critical in understanding the effectiveness of a system that is spraying the droplets.

Effect of oil-based emulsion on air bubbles in the spray sheet produced through the air-induction nozzle.

The air-induction spray featured by air bubbles involved in the spray sheet has attracted great attention in applications of agricultural spray due to its advantages of alleviating spray drift and promoting deposition. The objective of the presented study is to deepen the understanding of the mechanism of the air-induction spray through elucidating the effect of sprayed liquid on characteristics of air bubbles in the spray sheet. The air bubbles with relatively large sizes are stable for a long time span. As velocity of the water spray increases from 6.85 m s-1 to 17.87 m s-1 , average size of the air bubbles decreases from 383.21 μm to 236.47 μm. With the introduction of organosilicone surfactant, the surface tension of the sprayed liquid decreases from 67.38 mN m-1 to 31.32mN m-1 ; accordingly, average size of the bubbles decreases from 383.21 μm to 160.9μm. Compared to aqueous solutions spray, the oil-based emulsion spray is responsible for relatively small average size of air bubbles as the surface tension and spray velocity are respectively similar. Low drainage rate of the bubble lamella contributes to high stability of large air bubbles. The decrease of the average size of air bubbles is responsible for small volumetric median diameter of oil-based emulsion spray compared with water spray. Besides the increase of the spray velocity and the decrease of the surface tension, the Marangoni effect caused by dynamics of oil droplets at air-liquid interface also contributes to the decrease of average size of air bubbles. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.

Influence of pH, salt ions, and binary mixtures of different molecular weights on the extensional rheology of polyethylene oxide

In the context of modifying the extensional rheology of agricultural sprays to improve retention of sprays on plants, here we characterize the extensional rheology of dilute solutions of polyethylene oxide (PEO). Specifically, we examine the influence of pH and ionic strength, which vary significantly among agricultural sprays, as well as binary mixtures of two different nominal molecular weights of the polymer additive. Because PEO is nonionic, common intuition would predict that varying the pH and/or adding salt ions would have a minimal or negligible effect. However, the results presented here show a significant, complex, nonmonotonic, and ion-specific trend that is systematically documented for the first time. The role of shear degradation when mixing the polymer solutions is ruled out, and the data suggest that specific ion-polymer interactions appear to be more likely than changes in the solvent quality for producing this unexpected trend. We discuss some possible mechanistic explanations for the trend and highlight the potential impacts on product formulation as well as the need for improved theory of polymer physics.

Risk of Legionellosis in residential areas around farms irrigating with municipal wastewater.

The conservation of freshwater is of both global and national importance, and in the United States, agriculture is one of the largest consumers of this resource. Reduction of the strain farming puts on local surface or groundwater is vital for ensuring resilience in the face of climate change, and one possible option is to irrigate with a combination of freshwater and reclaimed water from municipal wastewater treatment facilities. However, this wastewater can contain pathogens that are harmful to human health, such as Legionella pneumophila, which is a bacterium that can survive aerosolization and airborne transportation and cause severe pneumonia when inhaled. To assess an individual adult's risk of infection with L. pneumophila from a single exposure to agricultural spray irrigation, a quantitative microbial risk assessment was conducted for a scenario of spray irrigation in central Illinois, for the growing seasons in 2017, 2018, and 2019. The assessment found that the mean risk of infection for a single exposure exceeded the safety threshold of 10-6 infections/exposure up to 1km from a low-pressure irrigator and up to 2km from a high-pressure irrigator, although no median risk exceeded the threshold for any distance or irrigator pressure. These findings suggest that spray irrigation with treated municipal wastewater could be a viable option for reducing freshwater consumption in Midwest farming, as long as irrigation on windy days is avoided and close proximity to the active irrigator is limited.

Vehicle Detection from Unmanned Aerial Images with Deep Mask R-CNN

In this paper, a classification approach which is applied to Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network as deeper is proposed for vehicle detection on the images from UAV instead of the familiar methods. The different types of unmanned aerial vehicles are widely used for a lot of areas such as agricultural spraying, advertisement shooting, fire extinguishing, transportation and surveillance, exploration, destruction for the military. In recent years, deep learning techniques are progressively developed for object detection. Segmentation algorithms based on CNN architecture are especially widely used for extracting meaningful parts of an image. Additionally, Mask R-CNN based on CNN architecture rapidly detects the object with high-accuracy on an image. This study shows that the high-accuracy results are obtained when the Mask R-CNN is applied as deeper in vehicle detection on the images taken by UAV.

Control and Dynamic Simulation of Wire-Driven Precise Spray Robotic Arm

The spraying of citrus to kill insects is a necessary part of the citrus planting process. Most of the currently used sprayers are cover sprays, which cannot achieve accurate and low-consumption spraying. Causing a lot of pesticide waste and environmental pollution. Aiming at the difficulty of precise spraying of citrus leaves, this paper proposes a soft spraying manipulator with good bending characteristics and flexible operation ability. The robotic arm consists of 6 joints and 2 arm segments. The two arm segments of the robotic arm are driven by two wire ropes and move in two orthogonal planes respectively. The PD controller design is designed. The joint state observers are constructed to predict joint angles, angular velocities, and other information. The dynamic simulation experiment is carried out, and the relationship between the wire rope tension and the spring elastic force changes with time, and the relationship between each joint angle changes with time. These make the wire-driven precise spray robotic arm potentially useful in agricultural spraying.

Developing and testing of automated sprayer for agrochemicals application trials in Iraq

The field experiment was conducted with the aim of developing and testing an automatic sprayer for agricultural spray experiments and studying the effect of spray pressure, spray speed and spray height on the spraying process. The effects of the major spraying factors (pressure, speed, and height) on the spraying performance of the automatic sprayer were studied. This study included several traits: First - the drop sizes - Second - the penetration of the spray into the vegetation cover - Third, the spray wasted. The results showed: - First: - Increase in coverage percentage when using the first speed, 2 km / h, which amounted to 26.85%. An increment in the spraying penetration of the vegetation cover was observed at the second speed, 4 km/h, reaching 70%. Second - Pressure: The increment in pressure was accompanied by an increment in the coverage trait at the third pressure 3 bar, which amounted to 24.37%. The penetration trait was 81% at pressure of two bar, and wastage increased at the second pressure of two bar, which amounted to 25%. Spraying height: - Height) 40 & 50 cm (have no significant effect on the trait of coverage. However, it was significant in the trait of spraying penetration of the vegetation cover, as it reached at the first height (40 cm) 53% and at the second height (50 cm) 74%, and the trait of the lost at the first height, 40 cm was 13%, and at the second height, 50 cm, it reached 23%. It is concluded from the data, the extent of the effect that the spraying factors show on the studied trait, as The factors value increased is accompanied by an increment in some trait, in contrast to others. So, it becomes clear the necessity of coordinating the values of the factors with each other to obtain an equal spray.