Comparison between Liquid Immersion, Laser Diffraction, PDPA, and Shadowgraphy in Assessing Droplet Size from Agricultural Nozzles

Salvatore Privitera, Emanuele Cerruto, Giuseppe Manetto (), Sebastian Lupica, David Nuyttens, Donald Dekeyser, Ingrid Zwertvaegher, Marconi Ribeiro Furtado Júnior and Beatriz Costalonga Vargas
Additional contact information
Salvatore Privitera: Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), Section of Mechanics and Mechanization, University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy
Emanuele Cerruto: Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), Section of Mechanics and Mechanization, University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy
Giuseppe Manetto: Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), Section of Mechanics and Mechanization, University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy
Sebastian Lupica: Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), Section of Mechanics and Mechanization, University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy
David Nuyttens: Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium
Donald Dekeyser: Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium
Ingrid Zwertvaegher: Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium
Marconi Ribeiro Furtado Júnior: Department of Agricultural Engineering, Federal University of Viçosa, Viçosa 36510-000, MG, Brazil
Beatriz Costalonga Vargas: Department of Agricultural Engineering, Federal University of Viçosa, Viçosa 36510-000, MG, Brazil

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-20

Abstract: Spray droplet diameters play a key role in the field of liquid plant protection product (PPP) application technology. However, the availability of various measurement techniques, each with its unique operating principles for evaluating droplet size spectra, can lead to different interpretations of spray characteristics. Therefore, in this study, four measurement techniques—Liquid Immersion (LI), Laser Diffraction (LD), Phase Doppler Particle Analysis (PDPA), and Shadowgraphy (SG)—were utilized to evaluate the droplet size distribution of agricultural spray nozzles. Additionally, PDPA and SG were used to assess the average velocity of spray droplets. Experiments were conducted in three different laboratories with the main aim of comparing results obtained with various types of equipment utilized under ordinary practical conditions. Spraying tests were carried out using three flat fan nozzles and an air-induction flat fan nozzle. As a general trend, the lowest values for droplet diameters were measured using the Laser Diffraction technique, followed by Shadowgraphy. The PDPA technique provided the highest values for mean diameters ( D 10 , D 20 , and D 30 ) and the numeric median diameter ( Dn 0.5 ), whereas the Liquid Immersion method yielded the highest values for the Sauter mean diameter ( D 32 ) and volumetric diameters ( Dv 0.1 , Dv 0.5 , and Dv 0.9 ). Importantly, all measurement techniques were able to discriminate the four nozzles based on their Dv 0.5 diameter. Average droplet velocities showed a similar pattern across the four nozzles with the PDPA and the SG measurement techniques. The differences in diameter values observed with the four measurement techniques underline the necessity of always including reference nozzles in spray quality assessments to base classifications on relative rather than absolute values.

Keywords: spray characterization systems; digital image analysis; laser principle; droplet size distribution; droplet velocity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/7/1191/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/7/1191/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:14:y:2024:i:7:p:1191-:d:1438812

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().