Design of a portable drum based drip
irrigation system.
Number of small and marginal
farmers has reached to 82% of total holdings due to continuous divisions.
However there is very little information on farmers having less than 0.2 ha
with plot size being less than 0.0.05 ha. These sub marginal farmers suffer
from poor elasticity of farm techniques to be adopted at their farm size level.
Availability of water is a major concern if their land is not in command of a
public irrigation system. With sharp rise in horticultural produce, a sub
marginal farmer can earn his livelihood from small plot of land by growing
vegetables or other high value crops if water is available. Success of tradle
pumps pumping water from open dug wells or pond has proved this. However for farmers
who don’t have such source this technology was not feasible. They cannot have an exclusive water resource in their land due to scale
factor and many a time they don’t have access to water even from private owners
due to lack of conveyance channel or topography inhibiting them carrying water
to their fields. To overcome this, I tried to design a low cost system by which
a farmer can carry water from a public source i.e. a hand pump or open dug
well, or even an inaccessible pond.
The total study consisted of two
parts: first to design a system to transport water from site of resource to the
field and secondly to apply it efficiently to minimize the amount of water
required. For this the idea came from
seeing people rolling gas cylinder to
transport them from trucks to buildings just by pushing it. Another scene was
transport of water in buckets on small trolleys from public taps or tankers to
home. It was thought to combine both and create a system where a water tank can
be rolled on wheels. To do so, a cylindrical water tank of 100 litre was taken
and two old jeep tyres were fitted on both sides. This gave the tank a free
rolling on these two tyres. A U shaped handle was attached on both
sides for pushing the wheels as it is in lawn mower. To fully integrate the
handle with tyres, a cross of MS flat was fitted on tyres alongwith a shaft and ball bearing. This
reduced the effort in carrying the tank. Tests were carried out to push it on
rough surfaces and it was found that it with full capacity water of 100 litres
can be pushed on uneven surface with normal effort.
The total study consisted of two
parts: first to design a system to transport water from site of resource to the
field and secondly to apply it efficiently to minimize the amount of water
required. For this the idea came from
seeing people rolling gas cylinder to
transport them from trucks to buildings just by pushing it. Another scene was
transport of water in buckets on small trolleys from public taps or tankers to
home. It was thought to combine both and create a system where a water tank can
be rolled on wheels. To do so, a cylindrical water tank of 100 litre was taken
and two old jeep tyres were fitted on both sides. This gave the tank a free
rolling on these two tyres. A U shaped handle was attached on both
sides for pushing the wheels as it is in lawn mower. To fully integrate the
handle with tyres, a cross of MS flat was fitted on tyres alongwith a shaft and ball bearing. This
reduced the effort in carrying the tank. Tests were carried out to push it on
rough surfaces and it was found that it with full capacity water of 100 litres
can be pushed on uneven surface with normal effort. After carrying the water tank to field, it
should be put on an elevated mound having a ramp. A drip system can then be
attached with it for efficient application of water. The details are given in
figure 1.
The system has been
evaluated with two types of drip system: with
two pressure compensating drippers of 4 lph and 2 lph discharge and in line dripper of 4lph. While in 2 lph dripper, the discharge
was quite low, it was about 1.5 lph from 4 lph dripper. Based on these
evaluation following parameters were estimated. It is evident that all are
within limit.
Thus this system can be
used by sub marginal farmers to irrigate 200-400 m2 vegetable area.
The cost of system is about Rs 2000/- only. If any body is interested in evaluating
the system at their end, can write to author at ramesh_cari@yahoo.co.in.
 |
Parameter
|
5 min
|
20 min
|
35
min
|
Avg
discharge lph
|
1.66
|
1.47
|
1.47
|
Reduction
in discharge w.r.t. initial discharge, per cent
|
11.57
|
11.57
|
|
Manufacturer’s
Coeff. Of variation
|
5.53
|
5.56
|
6.43
|
Uniformity
Coeff
|
0.90
|
0.90
|
0.90
|
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