|
| This customer is putting down a rate at the very high end of what is currently possible with our unit, 160 lbs of actual N. A number of factors affect the sealing performance just like a knife. If it is either too wet or too dry performance will decrease (in this case it is a bit on the wet side). Soil type is a big factor. But more imprtantly, the sealing performance witrh this unit is highly dependent on operating speed. In general the faster you can go, up to 8-8.5 mph, the unit will seal better. In some instances high operating speeds are hard to acheive. I dont think you are losing more than a couple percent of the total usually and for the actual field conditions the performance was probably on par with what you would get from a knife. In reality I think it was wetter out there than one might usually be applying nh3. It is just like a knife applicator where you have to kind of play with your speed and depth and try to find a sweet spot where it seals the best. You get into sort of a catch 22 because the unit as a tillage device will handle wetter conditions than the unit as an ammonia applicator will tolerate. It's always the same thing with farmers and performance- you give an inch and they take a mile- you put down 140 and they want 160 then 180, you run in damp conditions and then they want to run in sopping wet conditions, you go 7 mph and they want to go 9. You make a 90 ft planter and somebody want a 120ft planter.
Jim and I were just discussing in the office here about whether these are solveable engineering problems or fundamental physical limitations. I agree that at some point for a given field condition you are just going to hit a wall where you just can't get any more ammonia to seal. There is an interesting book by Stephen Jay Gould called "Dinosaur in a Haystack" where he talks about the evolution of everyday things. Like why don't you see .400 hitting anymore in baseball, or why are racehorses not any faster today than they were 200 years ago. Look at a graph of the winning time of the NYC marathon plotted out since the race started. Early on in any developemental process you see very rapid accelration of developement (in our case "strip till performace") and that slows over time until you hit the optimized condition. Has the performance of a disk or field cultivator or moldboard plow really increased substantively in recent times? They have reached a stable point and have leveled off even though people keep trying different configurations of stuff. I personally think that you will continue to see rapid performance increases in our nh3 systems and general strip till performance for a while more but as Jim says, there will come a point where no more can be done. It will be fun to probe that point. The nh3 injection equipment is changing as we speak to help accomodate these higher rates. | |
|
- Kansas Terraces, NH3, Dry, RTK, VRT & Strip Till (pics) - Jim : 11/18/2008 22:57
- Re: Kansas Terraces, NH3, Dry, RTK, VRT & Strip Till (pics) - Brandon SWIA : 11/18/2008 23:28
- RE: Kansas Terraces, NH3, Dry, RTK, VRT & Strip Till (pics) - luegerfarms : 11/18/2008 23:30
- RE: Jim, I noticed... - 40DODGE : 11/19/2008 12:07
- Re: Kansas Terraces, NH3, Dry, RTK, VRT & Strip Till (pics) - BSchroeder : 11/19/2008 14:05
- RE: Kansas Terraces, NH3, Dry, RTK, VRT & Strip Till (pics) - wickej : 11/19/2008 22:18
- RE: Kansas Terraces, NH3, Dry, RTK, VRT & Strip Till (pics) - Ontrack : 11/20/2008 10:01
|
Kansas Terraces, NH3, Dry, RTK, VRT & Strip Till (pics)
