Development of a smart monolayer application system for reducing evaporation from farm dams: Introductory paper

Brink, Gavin and Symes, Troy and Hancock, Nigel

Agricultural Technologies in a Changing Climate,

Chemical monolayer fi lms are potentially an economical low-impact means of reducing evaporative loss from farm water storages. However, their performance can be highly variable as they are affected by climatic and environmental factors: principally wind, wave action and bio-degradation. Some of this observed variability is associated with the monolayer materials themselves and their interaction with the water-surface physics and biology, but the fact that they are only a few nanometres thick means that a very small amount of material has to be distributed over a very large area. Therefore, appropriate and timely autonomous application of monolayer, with regard to prevailing (and changing) wind conditions on-site, is required. Although a number of autonomous application systems for monolayer already exist, none has proved overly successful. It is argued that while this is in part due to sub-optimal performance of monolayer materials, it is also due in large measure to inaccuracies and/or inappropriate design in both application systems and particularly application strategies, which are not adaptive to the prevailing environmental conditions. Therefore a control system is being developed to adaptively and spatially vary monolayer application rates according to changing conditions monitored on-site. This will form part of an autonomous electromechanical system for the optimal application and spreading of any given chemical monolayer. This paper reports progress towards this objective; firstly by evaluation of the design requirements for automated systems at a range of spatial scales; and secondly via the construction of a first pre-proto type to act as an evaluation platform and concept demonstrator.

智能农业真实节水化学单层薄膜应用系统简介

作者：Brink, Gavin and Symes, Troy and Hancock, Nigel

发表年份：2009

期刊：气候变化与农业科技

化学单层薄膜法是一种潜在的经济的方法，它可以减少农场水的蒸发损失量。然而，由于受到气候和环境诸如风、波浪作用和生物降解等因素的影响，它们的表现会有很大的变化。这些观察到的变化与其自身的单分子材料以及它们与水面的物理和生物的关系相关，但事实上，化学单层膜是极少量的物质分布在一个面积非常大的区域，实际上只有点纳米的厚度。因此，根据当时的风向条件来适当的及时的使用单分子层是必需的。虽然有一些单层的独立应用系统已经存在，但是还没有一个被证明是成功的例子。有人认为，尽管可能的原因是单层材料的次优性能，然而这在很大程度上也是由于应用程序系统特别是应用战略的错误/或不恰当的设计，主要是因为不适应于当时的环境条件。因此，正在开发一个控制系统，这个控制系统能根据监测现场不断变化的环境在空间上自适应性的改变单层的应用率。本文介绍了在这方面取得的进展，首先评估了不同空间尺度自动化系统的设计要求，其次通过建设一个预模型来作为评估平台和进行概念演示。