Experimental agriculture: More efficiency in fertilising through mobile batching systems

Introduction

In experimental agriculture, it is important that each plant in the field receives only a fixed amount of liquid fertiliser that is allocated to it. This serves to quantify how much fertiliser a plant really needs for optimal growth. These tests lead to a more sustainable and resource-saving application of fertilisers in agriculture. The mobile metering unit was developed to save valuable time and increase the quality of fertiliser application through high repeatability.

In this special application, dry fertiliser in granular form is used as the starting material. The reason for using dry fertiliser is that it is easy to store and has a long shelf life, as liquid fertiliser is too unstable and would decay after a short time. The dry fertiliser is only dissolved in the water when it is applied on site.

Since it is very impractical to fill a fixed amount of water in the field again and again with great precision using a measuring container, this portable dosing system was developed.
With it, the user gets exactly the amount of water needed at the push of a button. Using this system saves a lot of time when fertilising. Due to its compact size, this mobile metering unit can be easily mounted on any tractor, but can also be hand carried.

All advantages:

- Time saving / efficiency gain
- Easy to use
- Repeatable measurement of the water

In this mobile plant are installed:

A Badger Meter Oval gear meter in PVC
with pulse transmitter
B Membrane pump
C Filter
D Batch control unit
E Input terminal
F Start button

Challenge

A preselected quantity is to be entered into the dosing control interface.

Solution

After pressing the Start button, the membrane pumps are started. The Badger Meter IOG Industrial Oval Gear meter starts counting the volume by measuring the passing liquid using the detection of the rotation of two interlocking oval gears in a precisely machined chamber, and sends pulses to the batch control unit. The number of pulses corresponds to a precisely defined quantity. When this quantity is reached, the controller switches the membrane pump off and the plant will be ready for the next batching operation.