Testing Existing Prototypes of Conductivity Sensors for Monitoring the Concentration of Organic Fertilizers in Fertigation Systems

Abstract

[EN] Agricultural production has grown in recent years, increasing the use of Organic Fertilizers (OF). For that reason, the use of these compounds must be controlled in fertigation water. In this paper, we test three prototypes, using different combinations of coils, to determine the amount of OF in the water. A coil is powered by a sine wave of 3.3 peak-to-peak Volts for inducing another coil. The objective of this system is to detect different kinds of problems that can cause incorrect fertilization, which affects the sustainability of agriculture. We present the tests to verify the proper functioning of the prototypes. We test our prototypes by means of different dilutions of OF. The used concentrations of OF are between 0 and 20 g/l. We measure the conductivity for each concentration and the output voltage of our prototypes. The results show that prototype 3 is the one that has the best performance, obtaining 1.47 V of difference between the maximum and minimum output voltage and a good correlation coefficient. Finally, a verification test is carried out; the average error in the different samples tested is 0.2212%.