SprayRay - nozzle on the radar
Product Overview
SprayRay: radar signature of a spray
The applications of nozzles in industry and agriculture are extremely manifold and wide-spread. Liquids or powders are atomized to a spray in many applications. The spray is applied to surfaces, whereas mostly an even distribution has to be achieved.
The measurement of the working quality of the particular nozzle within the spraying process is hitherto not possible or with high effort only. Deterioration of the working quality of a nozzle due to wear, caking, blockage or partial blockage, simply wrong handling or setup and so forth could not be detected in real-time in the process.
To assess the working quality of a nozzle SprayRay deploys a new method measuring the Radar signature of the spray.
The MSO SprayRay sensor solution is based on 24 GHz radar technology with separate digital signal processing. For an application specific solution the SprayRay sensor is being integrated in a superordinate system e.g. for applications with a multitude of nozzles as to agricultural sprayers. An exemplary full system integration monitoring sprayers with hubs, ECU and application specific monitoring software implemented on an on-board computer is available with the MSO SprayMon.
The monitoring of a single nozzle is achieved by comparison of the given radar signature with a reference normal signature teached-in e.g. in a supervised machine learning process.
The SprayRay sensor detects quality properties of the spray contactless and integrating over the whole or most of the spray. A radar signal is pointed onto a wide area or the complete spray. Due to the Doppler effect the signal reflected and received has a shifted frequency spectrum proportional to the speed of the droplets of the spray. The signal power received depends on distance, radar cross section and amount of the material measured. Thus the power spectral density determined of the beat signal depicts the working quality of the spray and nozzle respectively by its radar signature.
With SprayRay the working quality of the nozzle is determined in real-time in the process.
The SprayRay method and technology has been invented and developed by MSO Meßtechnik und Ortung GmbH. The SprayRay sensors are manufactured by MSO and are in production.
The method and technology has been patented. US-Patent US10,564,259B2 "Method and system for detecting, characterizing and assessing the quality of a spray" and the European patent EP3441784 have been granted.
Benefits
Benefits
- Contactless capture of the spray by Radar sensor.
- Encapsulated robust sensor.
- Integrating capture of the whole or a wide area of the spray.
- Enables detection of deterioration of the working quality due to e.g. wear, caking, partial blockage, clogging of the nozzle.
- SprayRay can be integrated in divers industrial or agricultural applications e.g. SprayMon for sprayers with a multitude of nozzles monitored.
