Andy Hale

Precision agriculture technology is being adopted in many crop production enterprises to optimize crop yields, minimize their associated costs and reduce environmental impacts of excessive crop inputs. Precision agriculture technology enhances management through variable-rate application of lime, fertilizers, pesticides, seeds and tillage. The management protocol is based on determining soil variability by georeferenced soil sampling/mapping, determining yield potential by georeferenced yield monitoring, and using agronomic recommendations for variable-rate application of inputs. Technologies available include georeferenced soil sampling, on the go crop sensors, variable rate control systems, and yield monitors.

Evaluating new application technologies can help farmers use crop inputs more efficiently, offer enhanced environmental protection, and improve profitability. Technology costs continue to decline relative to other costs in the production system. By evaluating available technologies for application in crops such as corn, recommendations can be prepared to enable growers to better utilize these technologies. This proposal aims to study and compare variable rate application of layby nitrogen using prescription maps to variable rate application of layby nitrogen using on-the-go sensing of plant nitrogen stress and/or biomass. Real time sensing of plant nitrogen stress and/or biomass offers the possible reduction of nitrogen application due to residual nitrogen in the soil from prior crop production as well as season specific crop response. The available sensors need to be evaluated under crop production conditions to determine suitability for predicting variable rate nitrogen in corn in North Carolina.

The Brooks Gasification Process (BGP) is a continuous feed, indirect heating process suitable for processing a variety of solid feedstocks, primarily manure and other agricultural waste materials. The focus of this proposed work is solely on poultry litter, the mixture of wood-chip bedding, manure, spilled feed, and water. A pilot scale unit being tested has shown significant repeated fouling of the heat exchanger by ash and tar. This project will investigate the feasibility of simulating airflow and heat transfer from within an engineering design platform to provide insights into possible design or operational modifications that would address the fouling problem.