Five MSU Mechanical Engineering students (Mark Taylor, Tyler Finses, Michael Hilk, Scott Burek, Dylan Etheridge) have taken on improving SSCDS material handling efficiency as their capstone project. The task the students are faced with is to reduce the amount of “waste” material used by the system to carry agrichemicals to the spray nozzles. The basic problem is that we are using chemical to carry chemical through the system and the volume of material needed to fill the system can sometimes exceed the volume needed for application!

John Nye’s “reservoir” or “pop bottle” style SSCDS is the starting point for the students. In this system reservoirs are added for each set of three microsprayers. The reservoirs are filled with chemical with a water pump at less than 35 psi and evacuated at 60 psi using air pressure. The students will be evaluating whether pneumatic pressure can be used to send packets of chemical to fill the reservoirs eliminating the need to carry chemical to the microsprayers with more chemical.

We Wish them Luck!!

09.05.15