Project description
New angle-changing automatic sprinklers
Agricultural irrigation accounts for substantial water use. Analyses of the agricultural pressures on water quantity show that water scarcity is an increasing problem and the situation is expected to worsen with climate change. Despite sprinkler automated irrigation, challenges remain and the result is a big loss of water – more than a quarter of the fresh water needed – and an increasing carbon footprint from the fuel-powered motor pumps. The EU-funded ELEKTRORAIN project is developing a unique travelling rain-gun irrigation system that will reduce water loss. It is programmable and has an attached control mechanism to change speed and angle. This makes it possible to adjust so as to overcome water loss in borders and corners and avoid obstacles and navigate different field shapes and sizes.
Objective
Despite sprinkler automated irrigation has made significant breakthroughs at the time, irrigation still face several and important challenges as: 1) Field’s obstacles as electricity pylons, buildings, rocks etc. 2) Irregular field shapes 3) Field corners/borders, making the farmer use fixed sprinklers to irrigate this area, 4) Wrong irrigation speed. All together provoke a big water loss of more than the 25% of the fresh water needed (depending on the crop and field size), an increase of the irrigation time of the 30%, (depending on the flow and speed) and as a consequence, the increase of the carbon foot print that this extra time provokes, as the motor pumps are powered by the fuel. This can be translated into thousand litres of freshwater lost and hours from farmer/operator time, as a continuous sprinkler supervision is needed.
SIME Idromeccanica SRL, a company located at the Reggio Emilia region in Italy, with more than 50 years’ experience regarding irrigation systems, developed ELEKTRORAIN: a unique travelling rain-gun irrigation system avoiding a water loss of the 25%, and a reduction of the time needed of the 30%. ELEKTRORAIN is provided with a programable and attached control mechanism able to provide a more uniform irrigation changing the speed and angle overcoming water loss in borders/corners and avoiding obstacles and different field shapes/sizes without manually adjusting the gun. Sprinkler irrigation systems market is projected to reach € 2.4 billion by 2025, from € 2.1 billion in 2019, at a CAGR of 2% during the forecast period. Also, the European agricultural sector is responsible for about 24 % of the global water use. Hence, the Micro-irrigation System market in the region is expected to continue to grow to 14.06% CAGR over the forecast period of 2019-2027
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
42016 GUASTALLA
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.