Hydraulic and earth engineering – Drainage or irrigation – Control means responsive to sensed condition
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-07
2001-11-06
Bagnell, David (Department: 3673)
Hydraulic and earth engineering
Drainage or irrigation
Control means responsive to sensed condition
C405S039000, C137S078300, C137S142000, C239S063000, C239S067000, C239S562000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06312191
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present Invention belongs to the technical area corresponding to systems for located irrigation, also called microirrigation field.
In particular, it proposes itself as new alternative of adaptative and sustainable technology, against other well-known microirrigation systems, characterized by the possibility of operating automatically watering, according to the necessities of the ambient, the man and the cultivations, with accent in natural resources saving and energy autonomy.
INTRODUCTION
The necessity of new and better solutions to the feeding of the vegetable species cultivated in the planet, is affected nowadays by opposed tendencies.
On one hand, the growing alimentary demand of a world population that has not stopped to expand, has taken to use new technologies in order to forcing the productive yield of lands on the edge of exhaustion, as well as to extend the frontiers from the agriculture to areas before rejected.
On the other hand, the disposition of elementary natural resources as soil, water and air was narrowed, as a consequence not only of the demographic growth but also due to environmental contamination and negligent uses, increased by degrading effects in the climate.
When being definitively lost or deteriorated an important part of the natural wealth, is no longer so easy to use indiscriminate or unilaterally the essential resources, not even with the intention of satisfying those requirements.
Therefore, it is imposed to qualify well-known or new solutions, strictly based on a conception of the planet as ecosystem.
If being affirmed the present tendency to reduce agrochemicals use toward a more organic agriculture, it will surely imply a more rational employment of natural factors, to service the global necessities of the ecosystem.
So, while water able for feeding human or vegetable is becoming a scarce resource, still in traditionally favored regions, it arises as a high-priority necessity to solve the problem of watering with rigorous efficiency approaches for savings on the element and its use.
A second requirement of current validity is to include the so called “fertigation” that takes advantage of the hydraulic road to incorporate fertilizers, medications and other chemicals in the most economic form. This acquires special importance in the exploitation of over used lands.
A third important necessity refers to the economic use of sandy or loamy composition soils, where the nutrients shortage is intrinsic.
A fourth emergent phenomenon, related with those formerly exposed, consists in the saline problem, involving three aspects: to recover soils very much exploited from deep salinization; to incorporate as crops lands, areas traditionally rejected by their saline content, and finally the feasibility of watering with brackish water, when it is the only one locally available.
A fifth necessity arises from the increasing tendency to automate certain agricultural systematic operations with the intention of improving and regulating productive results, so much when the cultivations are carried out covered in modern greenhouses, as when the goal is to diminish climatic risks, to reduce heavy human tasks and to improve results cultivations yields. Said “fertigation” techniques are particularly able to be automated with advantage, but until the present it has implied high costs, maintenance inconveniences, bigger energy consumption and cultural difficulties for their adoption.
A sixth necessity refers to the emergent market of non-assisted watering of home gardens or alike, more and more extended in the breast of big cities possibly as a compensatory tendency to their characteristic contamination and excessive population living there.
In the current state of the technique—that will be referred detailedly in the following paragraph—the mentioned necessities are far from being integrally satisfied, still considering the last and well-known advances in located watering, as for example drip and trickle irrigation.
It is in said context that the present Invention appairs, providing a Self-sustained Ecological Irrigation System able to assure an appropriate feeding to the cultivations, based on a significant resources economy and also giving answer to the other outlined requirements.
To achieve those results, it combines traditional technical resources, as for example gravity liquid conduction and distribution with more modern technical resources as for example employment of distribution networks implemented with low cost and simple manipulation plastic pipe; with further more recent technology resources as for example the programmable intelligent command module acting automatically in close-loop mode by means of sensors; and finally with special innovative resources, as the incorporation of an hydraulic discharge valve able of working with big flows using very tiny energy.
Summarily, the Invention in a basic configuration comprises at least a self-sustained ecological irrigation subsystem feeding a limited cultivation sector having homogeneous requirements, assisting it automatically during an indefinite period that could embrace the complete evolutionary cycle of the referenced vegetable species.
The Invention operates periodically along a cycle—generally daily preferable—comprising a first preparation sub-cycle embracing most of time of the total period, followed by a second discharge sub-cycle with relatively shorter duration, finally restarting the cycle from its beginning.
Said preparation sub-cycle is employed to accumulate in a deposit the total volume of water to be discharged per cycle, through a minimum flow rate. After reaching the preset maximum level, the System rests in a wait state. Additionally, a mechanism of triggered discharge is prepared, accumulating potential energy in the form of pressurized air, into a special configuration of hydroneumatic siphon device.
This preparation sub-cycle is also employed by the Invention to integrate in an integrator mean, incoming electric power for example generated by a photovoltaic convertor, so dimensioned to guarantee—with the aid of energy storage means—the uninterrupted operation in the most unfavorable conditions.
A command circuit determines from preset conditions the adequate moment to the discharge and executes it by sending a reduced energy impulsive electric signal to a pneumatic trigger device that evacuates said pressurized air, causing a high flow discharge until emptying the deposit in few minutes. Doing so, the beginning of a new cycle is immediately enabled.
The discharge is driven through a low restriction distribution network, in which the major hydraulic loss is spread between the located emission holes whose diameter is about some millimeters. It determines a relatively uniform space distribution, without the intrinsic obturation dangers of other narrow passage restrictors.
STATE OF THE ART
If one observe the fundamental tendency with which the watering methods had historically evolved, as human inventive exercise to increase the production of foods palliating climate risks or the characteristics of the cultivated land, a progressive tendency can be identified, toward a more and more precise application—in spatial, rythm and volume terms—with the consequent water savings.
On the other hand, this techniques have evolved imitating the two natural phenomenons that provide useful irrigation water: rivers and rains.
First of all, antique systems as dams, aqueducts, channels and furrows were perfected, integrating the so called surface watering in reference to the application form; or by gravity referring to the type of energy that impels the liquid toward its destination.
Then, the mechanical advances that characterized the first half of the present century, allowed the directed emulation of precipitations by means of fixed powered sprayers. These facilities, where the water is piped and pressure impelled, allowed to increase watering efficiency essentially by reduction of the distribution losses. Among the last achievements of this technical group the one denominated c
Bagnell David
Lagman Frederick L.
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