Name : Uppuluri Krishn
District & State : Prakasam, Andhra Pradesh
Category : Utility
Award : Consolation
Award Function : 4th National Grassroots Innovation Awards
Award Year : 2007
Innovation Description
Background
While facing problems with battery-operated sprayers, Krishna (46), an agriculturist himself, made the centrifugal sprayer. In this sprayer, the liquid from a tank falls on a fast rotating fan resulting in a misty spray.Apart from his wife, he has two sons in his family, both of whom are in temporary jobs presently. Krishna has studied till intermediate only and has been practicing agriculture since his early twenties. He owns around one and a half acre of dry land. He developed an interest over time to make new agricultural equipments. In order to supplement his meager income, he also has to work as a casual labour in other farms.As a child, he was quite serious in studies and inquisitive about most things. He used to bother his father by posing innumerous questions and this father always tried his best to satisfy his son?s queries. He was very fond of reading science fiction books. As a result, he became quite imaginative and always kept himself busy in experiments of one sort or another. Though he was above average in studies, his parents were against his spending much time on experiments. They feared that he might do badly in studies if he continued like that. His teachers and friends supported and encouraged him a lot though.
Genesis
He had used Helispray with battery but was not satisfied with its performance. The difficulties he faced in using the spray motivated him to devise a sprayer that worked without battery.Normal sprayers pressurize water for spraying while in this sprayer, the water is made to fall on a fan, which breaks it into a fine droplets and thus spraying is achieved.
Innovation
This is a manual knapsack spinning disc sprayer. The spinning disc sprayers are available in the market but the innovator has replaced the battery with gear system. It can spray the pesticides in the form of fog.The sprayer consists of a twelve-litre tank with a stopper valve mounted on an iron stand. A long handle lever is provided with “U” shaped ring to operate the sprayer. An HDPE knurled disc/fan is connected to it through gear wheel arrangement, which converts the reciprocating motion (of the lever) into rotary motion (of the fan).When the user starts to operate the handle up and down, reciprocating motion of the lever is converted into rotary motion of the fan. The chemicals, then flow from the tank to the top portion of the fan with the help of stopper valve. The fan breaks the droplets into fine mist due to its centrifugal force.The battery system has been replaced by coupling spring actuated lever and flexible transmission devices for the atomization of liquid chemicals. The gear arrangement with spring actuated lever and flexible transmission system operates the spinning disc to atomize the fluid. The cost of this sprayer is under a thousand rupees.Innovator has received some recognition for his work through media and people have also started to ac nowledge his efforts. He wishes to experiment some of his other ideas like saving cooking gas, creating electricity with solar energy, new pedaling method of cycles, etc., in times to come.
http://nif.org.in/innovation/Low_cost_Centrifugal_Sprayer/358