Overview
Can you imagine an application which could water and fertilize crops accurately under the soil ? Our team’s watering device dose!
Traditional irrigation technology depends on water permeation from soil surface to the plant roots, this process will lose much water and fertilizer, besides lead soil hardening.
And our device, an improvement of micro-irrigation, perfectly solve this problem. It aims at target irrigation, supplying water and fertilizer for plant roots directly and precisely, with the advantages of multifunctional, more energy-saving and higher water transport efficiency.
Weeds and pests are the most important damages to agronomy system, which resulted in agriculture economic losses of more than $20.4 billion in 1972. Merely taking the United States as an example, the damage is $8.4 billion a year, while pests account for 40% and weeds account for 60%. In our country, China, the crop yield loss is almost fifty million kilogram per year.
Note : Micro-irrigation system is the most advanced irrigation system right now, through transporting the pressure water to the fields, it can irrigate the soil near the root of the plant by only a small flow of water permeation. The main superiority of micro-irrigation are energy saving, evenly irrigation and the strong adaptability to soil and topography, which can increase crop production and field salt tolerance.
Principle
Our device can not only provide nutrients and water for crops, but also take the herbicides to weed roots and kill weeds. So we call it“Crops Guardian”.
During the design, we aimed at one of the most widely distributed weeds family, Gramineae , whose roots locate about 10cm under the ground. According to this character, we determined our device parameters available for it.
Components
• Embedded device
Real priduct
1. The ground part contains two joints for connecting water pipes, which could firmly link with PE hose. And the annular groove can prevent the soil from entering device.
2. A connector between the water pipe and the PE hose.
3. PE hose which is high strength, corrosion resistance, non-toxic and low cost.
4. The underground part consists of 10 centimeter device body and a sprinkler head.
5. Spray part and spherical bottom. The spray part is made up of eight holes, which could supply water evenly. And the large spherical bottom can prevent the clogging or destruction during the insertion.
6. Complete device
Mixing Device
Overall
When the embedded device work with the mixing device , the overall effect diagram is like below.
This underground irrigation system not only reduces the losses of water, fertilizer and bio-pesticides but speeds up the weeding and killing pests efficiency by omitting permeation time.
Which is more economical and practical.
Materials & Cost
We use 3D printing technology to produce two part of devices. The material is photosensitive resin -Somos GP Plus, which is a low viscosity photosensitive polymer, with the advantages of excellent waterproof, durability and hardness. It could be used for making solid, precision parts. Other part of the water pipe is PE texture, which has the characteristics of high strength, corrosion resistance, non-toxic and low-cost.
3D printing is not suitable for the volume production. If our device use the mold to produce in batches, the unit price will drop to a very low level.
Usage
1st Connect the composite device between the ends of two pipes.
2nd Punch the pipe wall with a puncher.
3rd Then link the device to the water pipe through the connecting head.
4th Insert the head into the soil, open the tap water to irrigate.
5th Add pesticides and fertilizers to the Mixing device.
Performance & feedback
We put the device in the soil to test it performance. And we got conclusion that the effective watering radius of our device can up to 25cm, which is equivalent to the moisture that 20 - 30 wheat individuals are needed. Moreover, the water saving effect of this device is far more than traditional irrigation and sprinkler irrigation system.
Meanwhile, for gaining real user experience, we found some voluntary farmers to let them use our product for a while. We gave them instructions and helped them with installation. After a week, we got the feedback, which strengthened our confidence to perfect it and finally bring it to the market in the near future.
The positive side:
Most of them think the watering device is novel and easy to use, which is very convenient. In the northwestern China, areas are always arid, so they praised that the water-saving effects of our system are much better than any other irrigation methods. Also, they are touched by the integration of watering, fertilization and weeding of our device.
Areas for improvement:
Of course, as a preliminary design, our device also has some shortcomings. Like, for some deeper roots plants, the watering effect is not as good as to the shallow ones. And may be one field need several different size pipes to work together.
Conclusion
On the whole, they think this is a great invention. And they hope that our devices can be put into production in the near future and bring convenience to other farmers.
