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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture Volume 127 Issue 2016 (Doi 10.1016/j.compag.2016.07.021) Patel, Manoj Kumar Sahoo, Hemant Kumar Nayak, Manoj Kumar Gha - Plausibility of Variable Coverag PDF
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture Volume 127 Issue 2016 (Doi 10.1016/j.compag.2016.07.021) Patel, Manoj Kumar Sahoo, Hemant Kumar Nayak, Manoj Kumar Gha - Plausibility of Variable Coverag PDF
Original papers
Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Rafi Marg, New Delhi 110 011, India
CSIR-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Chandigarh 160030, India
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 26 November 2015
Received in revised form 11 April 2016
Accepted 16 July 2016
Keywords:
Air-assisted electrostatic nozzle
Aerodynamics
Charge neutralization
Induction charging
External air-assistive device
Variable coverage
a b s t r a c t
A system for spraying liquid pesticides to crops and orchards combines an induction based electrostatic
nozzle and externally air-assisted manually controlled mechanical device. In this paper, an innovative
concept has been executed for variable coverage high range spraying through an external airassistance system, which supplies compressed air to assist the finely divided charged liquid droplets
by farming a virtual covering around the fine mist of liquid spray. External air-assistive device consists
of movable support for air supplies whose variation of cone angle is from parallel spray center line
(0) to maximum spray cone angle (25). This provides a means to transport electrostatically charged fine
mist of liquid droplets to intended target with variable spray coverage angle of target, applicable in high
wind and transient conditions with enhanced performance without degradation of charge-to-mass ratio.
The results of applied induction electrification process were characterized by a charge-to-mass ratio as a
function of applied voltage, target distance, and wind current. It has been shown that the wind current
has an insignificant (p value = 0.021615) and significant (p value = 0.000325) effects on the performance
of the electrostatic nozzle at 99% confidence level with and without external air-assistive mechanical
device respectively. The experimental results are in good agreements with proposed concept.
2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Although, organic measures for crop protection are being preferred, chemical intervention is still the fastest and the most economical way for crop protection (Abhilash and Singh, 2009;
Chambers et al., 2014; Guthman and Brown, 2015). However,
due to lack of awareness and ignorance, pesticides are being used
indiscriminately, leading to side effects on human health and
ecosystem (Gupta, 2004; Isin and Yildirim, 2007; Cronk and
Fuller, 2014; Shivom and Kajal, 2015). Electrostatic method of pesticide application reduces off-target drift, environmental pollution
and human health risks and increases the bio-efficacy and mass
transfer efficiency onto the biological surfaces of crops and orchards with uniform back deposition (Abdel-Salam et al., 1993;
Chen et al., 2008; Cooper, 2011; Yang et al., 2012; Deng et al.,
2013). The spraying systems available in the market are uncontrolled in terms of spraying variability and application control
(Law, 1983; Law and Cooper, 1998; Sumner et al., 2000; Yu et al.,
2007; Mamidi et al., 2012; Patel et al., 2015). Pesticide application
Corresponding author at: CSIR-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation,
Chandigarh 160030, India.
E-mail address: manoj_patel@csio.res.in (M.K. Patel).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2016.07.021
0168-1699/ 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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M.K. Patel et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 127 (2016) 641651
VMD droplet), the droplet has to traverse the ambient environmental conditions and naturally occurring ionized region (Atkin,
1987). During the flight of charged spray droplets from the dispensing nozzle to the target object, several basic charge interactions may occur to affect both the charge retention and the
structural integrity of the droplets (Dix and Marchant, 1984;
Frost, 1984). Literature shows that there is a naturally occurring
phenomenon such as ionization by cosmic radiation, background
radioactivity and other radiations from electrical and electronic
equipment, producing ion pairs (Law, 1995). There exist naturally
occurring free charge and electric fields in the earths atmosphere.
Law (1978) states that air ion pair concentration is governed by the
relation as shown in equation:
dni
ci ai n2i
dt
where ci is the charge creation rate in ion pairs per cubic centimeter
per second, ai is the coefficient of recombination, and ni is the number of concentration of both positive and negative ion species.
Therefore, according to Law and Bowen (1987), the charged cloud
will encounter some degree of neutralization by two major actions:
(1) transverse travelling of the charged particulate matter in the
ionized region and (2) the migration of the air ions into the charged
spray cloud by the attraction of oppositely charged particles. Among
these interactions, the first mode of neutralization can be considered negligible because the travel distance is more than several
kilometers.
To keep into account the effects of wind current, harsh environmental conditions on spray drift and naturally occurring neutralization processes, a retrofitting device is designed and developed
to provide external air-assistance to charged droplets travelling
to the intended target. The external air-assistance forms a virtual
path and covering around the charged droplets and guides the
in-flight trajectory of charged particulate matter efficiently in
ambient and harsh environmental conditions.
Considering the Fig. 1(a), the external air-assistive retrofitted
mechanical device placed co-axially with electrostatic nozzle head.
In present design, the external air-assistive unit has six pipes for
supply of the compressed air. The air supply pipes may vary in
number depending upon the precision and application of spraying
Fig. 1. A portion of an air-assisted electrostatic nozzle consisting of external air-assistive mechanical device.
M.K. Patel et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 127 (2016) 641651
643
Fig. 2. Variation of spray coverage cone angle by external applied air pressure through mechanical device.
3. Experimental
The experimental set-up comprises an air-assisted electrostatic
nozzle, externally air-assistive unit, nozzle frame holder, high
voltage power supply (Model No.: HV-Rack-1-250-00287, ULTRAVOLT), rectangular aluminum plate as artificial target, Digital
Fig. 3. Experimental set-up of (a) electrostatic nozzle (b) electrostatic nozzle with air-assistive unit (c) air-assistive unit with different size O-rings to vary the cone angle of
spray coverage.
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Fig. 4. Charge-to-mass ratio/load current variation with the applied voltage and target distance (a) plot of charge-to-mass ratio/load current variation with applied voltage at
an applied internal air pressure of 3 bar, flow rate of 150 ml/min & a target distance of 0.2 m (b) plot of variation of charge-to-mass ratio with target distance at fixed applied
voltage of 2.0 kV, applied internal air pressure of 3 bar & liquid flow rate of 150 ml/min (target distance variation from 0.2 m to 3 m).
M.K. Patel et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 127 (2016) 641651
645
Fig. 5. Charge-to-mass ratio variation with the change in target distance (a) charge-to-mass variation at the target distance of 3 m and flow rate of 150 ml/min with and
without external applied air pressure of 3 bar (b) charge-to-mass ratio variation with different level of external applied air pressure of 0, 1, 3 and 4 bars at 3 m target distance,
an applied voltage of 2.0 kV & flow rate of 150 ml/min (c) variation of target distance with external applied air pressure while maintaining the same charge-to-mass ratio/
spray current.
The charge-to-mass ratio has been evaluated at different spraying target distance as shown in Fig. 4, which indicates that the
charge-to-mass ratio decreases with the increase in target distance. The closest distance of the target was 0.2 m from the nozzle
tip. It is found that the spraying distance affects the chargeto-mass ratio, consequently the liquid deposition efficiency (Law
and Lane, 1982; Friso and Baldoin, 2015). There are many reasons
for this deterioration of charge-to-mass ratio, hence the performance of electrostatic processes: (1) the smaller droplets are not
able to reach the target since the droplets have lost the momentum
(2) electrostatic forces are trying to levitate the fine droplets in the
environment, will remain until the target is available (3) the
decrease in charge-to-mass ratio is due to the existence of naturally occurring free charge and electric fields in the earths atmosphere. Therefore, charged droplets will encounter some degree
of neutralization by the following two actions: (1) traversing a
region of ionized air; and (2) causing migration of oppositely
charged air ions into the region of charged sprays (Atkin, 1987).
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Fig. 6. Experimental set-up to observe the effects of wind current on charge-to-mass ratio.
Fig. 7. Variation charge-to-mass ratio with the wind current and external applied air pressure (a) charge-to-mass variation with wind current at an applied internal air
pressure of 3 bar, external air pressure of 3 bar and flow rate of 150 ml/min (b) charge-to-mass variation with wind current of 1.5 m/s at an applied internal air pressure of
3 bar, external air pressure of 3 bar and flow rate of 150 ml/min.
Table 1
Paired two-tailed t-test for charge-to-mass ratio between with and without air current to evaluate the influence of air-assisted retrofitted mechanical device.
Situation
p-value
R2
0.000325
0.021615
0.994157
0.994811
0.988349
0.989650
Significant
Non-significant
M.K. Patel et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 127 (2016) 641651
647
Fig. 9. Spray coverage distribution with and without applied voltage of 2.0 kV (a) plot of water accumulated in test tubes with internal applied air pressure of 3 bars & no
external air pressure at a flow rate of 150 ml/min & an applied voltage of 0 kV (b) plot of water accumulated in test tubes with internal applied pressure of 3 bars & no external
applied air pressure at a flow rate of 150 ml/min with an applied voltage of 2.0 kV.
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plotted against the wind current. The wind current has been generated by using a blower (axial fan) for the laboratory experiments.
To measure the wind current flow, an air flow tracker (Kestrel
4200) has been used as shown in Fig. 6. The direction of wind current was in horizontal and perpendicular to the direction of spray
exit from the nozzle tip.
Considering the Fig. 7(a), the charge-to-mass ratio has been
plotted against applied charging voltage in the absence and presence of environmental wind current to observe the effects on the
performance of electrostatic nozzle. It was observed that in the
Fig. 10. Spray uniformity distribution with external applied air pressure (a) plot of water accumulated in test tubes at an applied internal air pressure of 3 bar, external air
pressure of 1 bars & a flow rate of 150 ml/min (b) plot of water accumulated in test tubes at an applied internal air pressure of 3 bar, external air pressure of 2 bars & at a flow
rate of 150 ml/min (c) plot of water accumulated in test tubes at an applied internal air pressure of 3 bar, external air pressure of 3 bars & a flow rate of 150 ml/min.
M.K. Patel et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 127 (2016) 641651
was negligible effect of wind current on the drift of charged droplets and on charge-to-mass ratio. The external air supply provides
a protective surrounding from the harsh environmental conditions
by farming a virtual path around the charged spray droplets.
Therefore, the effect of wind current of 1.5 m/s was insignificant
(p value = 0.021615) in the presence of external applied air pressure of 3 bar.
649
In the experiments, the cumulative liquid volume (CLV) of collected liquid in test tube number C25 has also been plotted. The
experiments were carried out for the duration of 2 min (300 ml)
with the nozzle having flow rate of 150 ml/min, which showed that
there were some experimental losses. It is also observed that in
case of electrostatic spraying, the cumulative volume (CLV) is
slightly lower in comparison to non-electrostatic spraying because
of attraction of charged droplets towards nearby objects.
Fig. 11. Spray coverage angle variation with the change in the diameter of external air-assistive device (a) plot of water accumulated in test tubes at applied internal air
pressure of 3 bar, external air pressure of 3 bars along with reduced diameter of external retrofitted mechanical device & a flow rate of 150 ml/min (b) plot of water
accumulated in test tubes at applied internal air pressure of 3 bar, external air pressure of 3 bars along with least diameter of external retrofitted mechanical device & a flow
rate of 150 ml/min.
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uid collection, it is found that grooves equidistant from the centermost groove approximately have almost equal amount of liquid.
The plotted curve has Gaussian trend of spray distribution which
has resulted into a uniform droplets distribution.
nozzle at 99% confidence level with and without external airassistive retrofitted mechanical device respectively.
Authors are thankful to the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi for the financial assistance. We also thank to
Mr. Ashwani Kumar for helping in conducting the experiments. We
sincerely thank to Dr. Abhishek Gupta for help in statistical data
analysis of the experimental findings. Support of CSIR-CSIO staff
and facility provided to pursue this research work is highly
appreciable.
5. Conclusion
The electrostatic spray could produce uniform and fine droplets
with better droplet adhesion and spread, higher deposition efficiency and bio-efficacy, lower application rate, reduced environmental contamination and less application expenses. The present
device focuses on shielding the fine electrostatic spray droplets
from harsh and transient wind conditions. The design uses concentric movable nozzles/pipes to vary the spray cone angle, the range
as well as coverage of the electrostatic spray. Such variation has
been achieved by simple mechanical means so as to make the
device least complicated in operation.
The present work provides an improved transport of the charged
droplets to intended target with the benefits over the available and
existing market equipment i.e. variable spray coverage with the
adjustment according to the requirement of target canopy,
applicable in the presence of high wind and harsh environmental
conditions, covers a longer target distance of the crops specially
in orchard spraying and increases the application efficiency. The
charge-to-mass ratio is inversely proportional to the distance
between the nozzle tip and the target. The system was more
efficient regarding to droplets deposition when the target was
longitudinal to the spray jet. It has been shown that the wind
current has an insignificant (p value = 0.021615) and significant
(p value = 0.000325) effects on the performance of the electrostatic
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