Hydraulic evaluation of locally modified emitter under laboratory conditions

Abstract Drip irrigation systems have become a major part of developing agriculture in Egypt and the aim of this research was to obtain the best performance from irrigation systems management using locally modified and original emitters. The experiments were carried out at the National Irrigation Laboratory of the Agricultural Engineering Research Institute. The emitters were tested and calibrated under different operating pressures (0.50, 0.75, 1 and 1.25 bar) to determine emitter flow rates and emitter emission uniformity (EU) and manufacturing variation coefficient (CV). The original emitter performance was determined using the relationship between emitter flow rate (2 lh−1) and operating pressure, with data indicating that the EU was 98.5%, at a CV of 2.3% and actual flow rate was 1.8 lh−1 for the original emitter. The EU was 93.8% with a CV of 5.2% and actual flow rate of 2.02 lh−1 for the modified emitter. For original emitter performance at 4 lh−1, data indicated that the EU was 96%, with a CV of 4.8% and actual flow rate of 3.78 lh−1. The EU for the modified emitter was 95% with a CV of 2.7% and actual flow rate of 4.5 lh−1. The emitter exponent values were 0.41 to 0.44 for modified and 0.37 to 0.38 for original emitters.