Evaluation of drip irrigation system performance under local gravel media in laboratory Hassan HE1, El-Khatib Si2, Mahmoud MM2,* 1National Institute of Laser Enhanced Science (NILES), Cairo University, Egypt 2Agricultural Engineering Research Institute (AEnRI) Agricultural Engineering Center (ARC), Egypt *Email for correspondence: mmoustafa.m16@gmail.com
Online published on 9 August, 2019. Abstract In drip irrigation water is applied to each plant separately in small, frequent and precise quantities through dripper emitters. It is the most advanced irrigation method with the highest application efficiency. The main objective of the present work was evaluation of drip irrigation system in laboratory and determination of concentration of suspended solids in the filtration media. In the micro-irrigation system the small openings can be easily clogged by suspended solids according to the level of total suspended solids (TSS) and plugging is caused which falls into three categories (<50, 50–100 and >100 ie slight, moderate and severe respectively). It was found that in case of using media filter, TSS value in water sample of media filter of Local Basalt was lower than Alabaster Misr Bank which was less than Ward El-Nile Zaffaranat at operating pressure of 20 to 60 kpa. Evaluation of the dripper's efficiency according to use appropriate filtration media for first filter Local Basalt at 20, 40 and 60 kPa emission uniformity EU was 94.73, 89.55 and 79.47 per cent ie excellent, good and fair value respectively; for second filter of Alabaster Misr Bank at 20, 40 and 60 kPa the EU was 95.84, 89.67 and 79.57 per cent ie excellent, good and fair respectively and for third filter of Ward El-Nile Zaffaran at 20, 40 and 60 kPa EU was 95.58, 87.56 and 68.56 per cent ie excellent, good and poor respectively. Accuracy of filtering media type with high efficiency for filtration the value was 79.3 and 76.9 per cent for Local Basalt and Alabaster Misr Bank but in the filter media of Ward El-Nile Zaffaran the removal efficiency was low (40.97%). Top Keywords TSS, drip irrigation system, dripper's efficiency, media filter, filtration. Top |