Design of Tank Water Level Control System for Automatic Sprinkler Irrigation
Tya, T.S.K , M.D. NGUDA &Burmamu, R.R
Department of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering,
Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola, Nigeria
Email: tsktya@gmail.com,
ABSTRACT
Design of tank water level control system for automatic sprinkler irrigation was carried out to monitor water level in the tank and to control the pumping process. The system was designed such that when the water in tank is below minimum, the pump will automatically activate and refill the tank and also sprinkle the water within the giving interval of time. The Water Level Control System using non-contact Sensor was designed and constructed around microcontroller (ATmega16A) utilizing non-contact water level sensor called ultrasonic sensor (HC-SR04). The performance of the constructed system was evaluated. Result showed that mean experimented volume of water level in the tank and actual volume of water level in the tank were 8.0 and 8.11 litres, which had correlation coefficient value of 0.90. The automatic sprinkler reveals that, the initial delay from the system was 90 seconds before the sprinkler activate and sprinkle water for 10 seconds. This indicate that there was higher time delay at the initial time while the sprinkler continue to activate and sprinkle the water for every 10 seconds interval with system delayed at 25 seconds interval, respectively. The efficiency of the system designed was 98.4%which showed that the automatic sprinkler irrigation system can be used by farmers to monitor water level in the tank and control the pumping process to enhance efficient use of irrigation water to increase crop yield.
Keyword: tank, water level, automatic, control, sprinkler, irrigation
