Study on atomization mechanisms and spray fragmentation characteristics of water and emulsion butachlor

Wanting Yang; Wei Zhong; Weidong Jia; Mingxiong Ou; Xiang Dong; Tie Zhang; Suming Ding; Li Jiang; Xiaowen Wang

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1265013

Study on atomization mechanisms and spray fragmentation characteristics of water and emulsion butachlor

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Oct 6:14:1265013. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1265013. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Wanting Yang¹, Wei Zhong¹, Weidong Jia¹, Mingxiong Ou¹, Xiang Dong¹, Tie Zhang², Suming Ding³, Li Jiang¹, Xiaowen Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Agricultural Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China.
² Science Innovation Center, Chinese Academy of Agriculture Mechanization Sciences Group Co., Ltd., Beijing, China.
³ Nanjing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Nanjing, China.

Abstract

Agricultural chemicals are commonly used to control pests and weeds, but cause pesticide waste problems. Oil-based emulsions are often used as pesticide formulations to improve pesticide utilization. In this study, the spray visualization experiment of the water and oil-based emulsion butachlor is carried out using an ST flat fan nozzle at 0.1-0.5 MPa pressure. The dimensionless method is used to analyze the difference in liquid sheet fragmentation morphology and disintegration process and the influence of different fragmentation methods on droplet size. It is found that the hydrophobic components in pesticide have a significant effect on the morphology and process of atomization fragmentation. When spray liquid is water, the liquid sheet breaks up into liquid ligaments due to the Rayleigh instability, then the ligaments break up into droplets. The side view of a liquid sheet is a large-amplitude wave disturbance. When the spray liquid is the emulsion butachlor, holes are generated on the liquid sheet, then the holes break up into droplets. The fragmentation method of emulsion spray is the perforation mechanism. Compared with water spray, the presence of the pesticide butachlor increases the droplet size and spray angle and improves the uniformity of droplet size distribution but reduces the breakup length. The spray angle shows a power law dependence of the Weber number with a power of 0.17 for all conditions tested here. At 0.3 MPa, DV50 increases 25%, and span decreases from 1.187 to 1.172. This study could provide reference for the addition of agricultural additives, the improvement of spray operation efficiency, and the establishment of spray fragmentation mechanism.

Keywords: agriculture; atomization fragmentation; droplet size spectrum; pesticide; spray.

Grants and funding

The authors declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was funded by the Modern Agricultural Machinery Equipment and Technology Demonstration and Promotion Project of Jiangsu Province (NJ2021-14) and the Jiangsu Province and Education Ministry Cosponsored Synergistic Innovation Center of Modern Agricultural Equipment (XTCX1003).