Progetti di ricerca

A soil moisture deficiency is causing warning conditions in 47% of Europe (2022). Due to the exponential growth of the world's population and ecological degradation, which has resulted in climate change, soil infertility, and water scarcity, future food shortages, food… Leggi tutto security is a worldwide concern. Additionally, an excessive reliance on dry inorganic fertilizers (DIF) in continuous agricultural cycles has resulted in a decline in the primal nutrient content of the soil, which has decreased agricultural output (depleted crop quality and food yield) and environmental nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) losses from volatilization, denitrification, leaching, and runoff. There are several alternative polymer coated fertilizers (PCF) in the market, however they have drawbacks such unpredictable nutrient release, ageing effects, excessive coating material consumption, potential for hazardous waste production after coating, etc. To ensure a controlled release of NPK, we wish to develop a novel coating method for DIFs using non thermal plasma in this proposed study (PFSA). PFSA will thus build a Rotating Pulsed Plasma Reactor (RPPR) with internal baffles. The coating will be achieved by using Methacrylic acid (MAA) and methyl methacrylate (MMA) as the two main acrylic monomer vapors that will be delivered into the plasma regime to produce a complex chemistry of acrylic molecule fragmentations that would attach to the DIF surface during the OFF time of the pulse. The plasma I-V, diagnostics evaluation will be performed and pulsed plasma coated DIF release kinetics as well as their physico-chemical characterizations are planned to understand their pre-applications. The suggested coatings would emulate hydrogel-type coatings that swell in the humid environment and retain moisture in addition to acting as pH sensitive barriers. Finally, the environmental losses will be evaluated for the pulsed plasma coated DIFs by collecting samples from the farm and analyzed in lab.