Desenvolvimento de um conjunto eletromecânico para monitoramento de bicos aplicados à pulverização agrícola

Abstract

The set of precision agriculture techniques has gained worldwide prominence, as through electronic resources coupled to machines, they improve planting, enhance the use of inputs, avoid financial waste, optimize work, and increase productivity in the same planting area. The most expensive inputs in agriculture are agricultural pesticides, sprayed to combat insects, fungi, and opportunistic endemic plants in commercial crops. Agricultural sprayers have a reservoir to hold the diluted pesticide liquid in potable water, a pump activated by an electric, hydraulic, or combustion engine to pressurize the pesticide liquid, hoses to conduct the pressurized pesticide liquid, and spray nozzles arranged in spray bars to uniformly spray the pesticide liquid over the soil or crop. Nozzle clogging is a significant obstacle to the effectiveness of spraying, and the verification of failures, until now, has been done visually by the machine operator. Since the pesticide does not leave traces after application, it is impossible to identify the points where it was applied or failed to be applied. In this dissertation, we present the construction of a bench with a 12V pump to assist in the development of the electromechanical assembly for monitoring nozzles applied to agricultural spraying, containing a magnetic target disposed on the plunger of the antidrip valve and the valve body with housing of the electronic circuit from a Hall effect sensor to inform the opening and closing of the anti-drip valve to the panel installed in the tractor cabin that reports to the operator the occurrence of failures due to clogging, breakage, or leakage in the spray nozzles. The developed set proves to be efficient for continuous monitoring of the flow in the spray nozzles and allows for the rapid identification of operational problems, reducing pesticide waste, and optimizing productivity with less environmental contamination.