Recipient Organization
Acclima, Inc
2260 East Commercial St.
Meridian,ID 83642
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
1. The developed instrument will provide a simple means for in-situ measurement of the bulk density of powdery substances such as powdered foods, cosmetics, chemicals, and soils. In the food and cosmetics processing industries it will provide a monitoring and feedback tool that will improve the control of milling, grinding, mixing and packing processes. In agriculture it will allow the assessment of soil type suitability for optimum crop selection thus assisting in the increase of the net overall yield of the worlds food producing soils. For example, peach trees do not thrive and produce well in compacted, high density soils. It will also provide soil density, compaction and infiltration data that will aid in more effective irrigation practices, thus assist in improving crop yields, crop quality, conservation of fresh water, and minimization of stream contamination from agricultural runoff.2. For use in food and cosmetics factories the instrument could be packaged as a production-line-mounted instrument that is exposed to the powdery material being manufactured. Feedback fro the instrument could be used to control the upstream grinding or milling processes thus maintaining a consistent density in the produced product. In agrictural applications it could be mounted to a Pogo-stick-like handle where manual probings could be made. The readout device would contain a GPS unit and cellular radio so that the probed data could be relayed directly to a cloud-based database where the density readings would be mapped. The resulting mapped density information would then be used by agricultural people in assessing their fields for optimum use in food production. Alternately, the device could be mounted to a hydraulically actuated probe on a tractor (perhaps a driverless model) that would automatically take the readings and deposit the data to the cloud. Such an implementation would be the foundation of service businesses throughout the world that would provide soil mappings to farmers.3. The ultimate goal of this product for Acclima, Inc is a significant increase in business revenues through the manufacture and sale of the instruments proposed in (2) above. But there is also a significant benefit to farmers who will benefit in better crop planning decisions and better utilization of their acreages. New businesses can emerge based on the use of this tool in providing mapping services to farmers thus benefiting the economy in agriculturally intense areas.
Animal Health Component
20%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
20%
Developmental
60%
Goals / Objectives
During the phase I period a full function prototype of a Thermo-TDR probe will be developed and tested. This device will measure the volumetric water content and permittivity of soils in its TDR contribution and will measure the soil heat transfer characteristics through a heat pulse and thermistor monitoring system. The combination of these measurements will provide a measurement of the bulk soil density.
Project Methods
A major effort will be the integration of two fundamental technologies into a single hardware implementation and measurement inperpretation. That will be to use a Time Domain Reflectometer waveguide both as a water content measuring instrument and as a heat capacity and diffusion measuring instrument. There are conflicting optimizations between the two applications that must be balanced. The interpretation of the resulting water content and heat dynamics data into medium bulk density output data must also be developed. The delicate subcomponents of the device must be packaged and presented to the soil in such a matter so as to be robust and immune to the abuses that are always present in agricultural environments.Success of phase I will be evaluated on the basis of the following items:1. accuracy with which the developed prorotype can measure the bulk density of soils and powders.2. assessed economic feasibility of manufacturing the device.3. potential of the device to achieve a high degree of reliability and robustness in agricultural environments.