Design of Mechanical Pump for Irrigation Power-Driven by Solar Energy Technology

Hakizimana Eustache^1, , Kayibanda Venant¹ and Furaha Shella Fravia¹

¹Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda

Cite this paper:
Hakizimana Eustache, Kayibanda Venant and Furaha Shella Fravia. Design of Mechanical Pump for Irrigation Power-Driven by Solar Energy Technology. Journal of Mechanical Design and Vibration. 2020; 8(1):1-6. doi: 10.12691/jmdv-8-1-1

Abstract

Solar power recently has been found as environmentally friendly if used where electrical energy is required. While many researchers have been conducted continuously, the generation of electrical energy has been achieved by using Photovoltaic (PV) modular technology. Today’s solar system has been introduced in a number of systems including, Solar Home System (SHS), industrial, and agricultural activities, but within agribusiness there are some issues which are not yet solved due to the cost of buying a solar system for related activities. By reviewing most of nowadays agribusiness especially crop irrigation, solar system, number of visits, research, designing and questioning have been done to be aware of what is missing to make the irrigation solar system more effective. While the number of people in the case study was answering different question from questionnaires, deep research has led us to be aware of designing a pump by mean of SOLIDWORKS with power ranging between 450W-500W for irrigating crops under 1ha. The number of calculations for sizing a pump has been done to generate a flow rate of 5.2l/s in order to be able for irrigating crops under 1ha. This approach is intended to make a solar system more effective in irrigation system by introducing some features in existing solar pumping system at relatively low cost and maximum efficient. The results show that the designed system leads to Higher efficient compared to the pumps in current use and thus will make it to be useful and profitable at large scale in case the implementation took place. Therefore, practically efficiency will be increased in terms of shorter time consumption during the irrigation process, pump availability and cost optimization, use of solar energy as a power source and output discharge.

Keywords:
mechanical design solar energy technology and irrigation

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