J. Abedi Koupai, A. Bakhtiarifar,
Volume 8, Issue 3 (10-2004)
Abstract
Water crisis is an important issue in arid and semi-arid regions like Iran. The situation has been getting more worse over recent years drought. Hence, there is a growing need to utilize low quality water where freshwater is scarce. In this regard, urban wastewater is a promising source but there are concerns about the environmental and health aspects of using such water. The main problem regarding the performance of trickle irrigation system utilizing wastewater effluents is clogging of the emitters. In this study, field trials at pilot scale were carried out to investigate the hydraulic properties of emitters using two types of water including treated wastewater and groundwater. The trickle irrigation system consisted of three 16 mm lateral tubes placed at 300 mm spacing in the main tube and each lateral tube had 16 emitters at 300-mm spacing. The designed discharge of the emitters was 4 L/h. The hydraulic properties of the different commercial emitters (micro flapper, long path, turbo plus and Eurokey) were assessed at different time periods.
The results indicated that the Eurokey and long path emitters had the maximum and minimum emission uniformity, respectively, when applying wastewater. using groundwater, the Eurokey and turbo plus emitters had the maximum and minimum emission uniformity, respectively, during the initial phase of the study. However, the Eurokey and long path emitters had the maximum and minimum uniformity values, respectively, at the end of the study. The turbo plus emitters are regulated and, as a result, showed no evidence of sensitivity to pressure variations hence, they can be used on uneven lands and where the trickle irrigation system has long lateral tubes.
