Agroforestry Innovations Lab Activities on Sprayer Performance and Certification

Becce, Lorenzo; Carabin, Giovanni; Mazzetto, Fabrizio

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-30329-6_31

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…All the experiments took place in the wind channel of the Agroforestry Innovations Laboratory of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (unibz), installed at the NOI Techpark (Figures 1 and 2). The wind channel, described in detail in [47], enables the testing of entire machines; for the present experiment, it was used as a confined environment without the application of wind. The tunnel is an open channel that is 30 m long, 10 m high, and 6 m wide.…”

Section: Experimental Set-upmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wind Tunnel Evaluation of Plant Protection Products Drift Using an Integrated Chemical–Physical Approach

Becce,

Mazzi,

Ali

et al. 2024

Atmosphere

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The use of plant protection products (PPPs) has become fundamental to guarantee excellent field productivity. Nevertheless, their usage presents critical issues, such as the quantity of substances used, the relative toxicity, and the contamination of nearby fields caused by atmospheric drift. This study focuses on the characterization of aerosol droplets of PPPs produced by spraying a chemical marker, fluorescein, with an orchard airblast sprayer equipped with conventional hollow cone (HC) and anti-drift air inclusion (AI) nozzles, using a wind tunnel as a controlled environment. A particle/droplet image analysis was employed to study the droplet production of the nozzles, while a liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) analysis allowed us to evaluate samples collected using a cascade impactor located at 5 m, 10 m, and 20 m from the emission point. Overall, HC nozzles are very accurate at producing specific drop size distributions (DSDs), while AI nozzles produce a much wider DSD, concentrating the largest part of the distributed volume into droplets of a larger size. The marker concentration was much lower for the AI nozzles compared to the HC nozzles; moreover, the two nozzles show a similar trend in the coarse droplet range, while significantly differing in the fine droplet spectrum.

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Section: Experimental Set-upmentioning

confidence: 99%