A Variable Rate Drip Irrigation Prototype for Precision Irrigation

A new Variable Rate Drip Irrigation (VRDI) emitter that monitors individual water drops was designed, built, and tested. This new emitter controllers water application directly by monitoring the volume applied in contrast to uniform drip irrigation systems that control water application indirectly by pressure compensation and operational times. Prior approaches assumed irrigation volumes based on flow rates and time and typically did not verify the applied amount of water applied at each water outlet. The new VRDI emitter self-monitors the total volume of water applied and halts the flow once the desired total water application has been achieved. This study performed a test for a new VRDI emitter design with two inner diameters of 0.11 cm and 0.12 cm and two outer diameters 0.3 cm and 0.35 cm compared to a commercial drip emitter. Laboratory tests verify that the integrated volume measurements of the VRDI system are independent of pressure. Conversely, the flow rates of the commercial pressure-compensated drip lines were not independent of pressure. These results demonstrate that this form of VRDI is technically feasible and is shown to be energy efficient, requiring lower system operating pressures than pressure-compensated lines. The VRDI system can reduce water consumption and related water costs.