Engineering technologies and systems

Introduction. A promising class of corrosion inhibitors is volatile or vapor-phase ones. They evaporate at ambient temperatures adsorbing on metal surfaces and providing reliable corrosion protection. Volatile corrosion inhibitors penetrate crevices and gaps inaccessible to contact inhibitors, inhibiting corrosion processes along layers of corrosion products. Their use is justified by sealing the protected space, preventing inhibitor evaporation. Currently, there are no low-volatile corrosion inhibitors resistant to temperatures above 80°C, so various packaging materials with low moisture and gas permeability are used. The use of such materials for preserving metal products has revealed several disadvantages: the hygroscopic nature of paper, the degradation of volatile corrosion inhibitors at polymer extrusion temperatures, and the high degree of manual labor required during preservation.

Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at developing an effective technology for protecting ferrous and non-ferrous metals using nitrogen-containing organic compounds – volatile corrosion inhibitors.

Materials and Methods. Based on the results of electrochemical and accelerated tests, the corrosion rate, protection level, and inhibition coefficient were calculated. St3 steel plates were selected as the samples on which the anticorrosive effect of volatile corrosion inhibitors was tested. Laboratory tests were conducted to determine the protective effectiveness of the resulting inhibitors. The reagents included ethnalolamine, boric acid,mono(aminoethyl)borate, di(aminoethyl)borate, and tri(aminoethyl)borate. The reagent ratio and reaction temperature were varied during the study.

Results. A series of volatile corrosion inhibitors were obtained in this study. It was determined that, in electrochemical testing in a 0.1 mol/l sodium chloride solution, the best results were obtained with a composition based on ethanolamine and boric acid in
a three-to-one ratio, namely, tri(aminoethyl)borate. The optimal inhibitor concentration on steel surfaces during accelerated testing in an environment with 100% relative humidity is 200 g/m³.

Discussion and Conclusion. The results obtained have potential for practical application in atmospheric corrosion protection of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. A promising area of application is the protection of steel equipment and electrical protection systems containing non-ferrous metals (copper, brass) using volatile inhibitors in agricultural production, mechanical engineering, and other fields.

Introduction. There are specified and considered the trends determining the directions
for the development of grain harvesting equipment. One of the most important issues is increasing the productivity of a grain harvester while maintaining its acceptable metal
content and energy consumption. Traditional solutions have largely exhausted themselves, so a promising solution is the use of the technology for combing of standing plants.
Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at determining the proportion of light impurities
separated from the grain heap depending on the height of the combing header outlet.
Materials and Methods. There was used an experimental method to examine a combing
header with preliminary separation of light impurities. During the experiment, the height of the stripper header outlet was varied. The mass of the separated chaff and its composition were determined. When processing the experimental data, there were obtained relationships meeting the study objectives. The results are divided into two groups: the results with the use of solid shields installed on the combing header rear wall and those without solid shields, when the rear wall is a mesh surface.
Results. There has been developed a method for determining the proportion of separated light impurities. There have been found the dependences of the proportion of separated light impurities and the proportion of lost grain on the combing header outlet height. There has been identified an optimal range of the combing header outlet height if the solid shields removed from the combing header rear wall. If the range of combing header outlet height is from 124 to 130 mm, the proportion of separated light impurities reaches 13%, while grain losses remain relatively low.
Discussion and Conclusion. In the context of separating the heap light impurities, there has been obtained a significant result, which allows not only unloading significantly the grain harvester cleaning system and increasing its productivity, but also improving the efficiency of separating grain on the pre-drum separating device or directly on the grate bottom of the inclined chamber.

Introduction. The increased anthropogenic impact of technological tools leads to a violation of the environmental sustainability and stability of crop production technological processes that has a negative effect on the existing agrarian landscape. Because of a significant number of single environmental indicators, the assessment of the environmental sustainability of technological processes is usually carried out without ranking their significance and without taking into account individual natural and climatic characteristics that significantly affect the agricultural production system. At the same time, there has not been developed a necessary approach for assessing the environmental sustainability with a high measure of reliability.

Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at justifying the criteria and proposing an assessment of the degree environmental sustainability and stability of technological processes in crop production.

Materials and Methods. The study was based on the use of analytical methods and the synthesis of scientific results obtained by various authors. There was employed statistic modeling of processes that made it possible to identify the patterns of these processes, determine and reasonably choose significant factors influencing the environmental sustainability and stability of the processes.

Results. There have been developed partial and integral criteria for assessing environmental sustainability and stability of crop production technological processes. There are given the examples of criteria calculation and the assessment of environmental sustainability and stability of the technological processes of transportation and application of liquid organic fertilizers to the soil. There has been substantiated the scale of assessment of technological processes based on the values of the integral evaluation criterion. According to the environmental sustainability degree, the authors propose to divide technological processes into stable, medium-stable, unstable and with high entropy.

Discussion and Conclusion. The authors proposed criteria for assessing environmental
sustainability and stability in crop production technological processes, which can be used for developing mobile apps, platforms, and logistics solutions to improve industry efficiency, labor productivity, product quality, etc.

Introduction. Vertical tillage is a new resource-saving technology that allows increasing
crop yields to 8.5 c/ha and improves soil structure with increased seeding depth for better root system development. For vertical tillage, there are used soil tillers such as turbodisc cultivators. The growing demand on environmental safety of technical means effect on the soil lead to the search for original solutions to reduce energy consumption and preserve soil fertility. Large volumes of crop residues in the fields are difficult to crush that leads to clogging the working bodies of machines (huskers, cultivators, plows, disc harrows) with crop residues and negatively affects the quality of crop residues crushing.

Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at determining the placement height of the working bodies for breaking sunflower stubble to increase the efficiency of its embedding in the soil.

Materials and Methods. А turbodisc cultivator design has been developed. The cultivator and the technological process of its operation have been examined. Theoretical mechanics was used to determine the degree of breaking plant residues by the working organs of the developed turbodisc cultivator. There was examined sunflower stubble in the form of an elastic vertical rod fixed from below. The force of impact on stubble was calculated. There were determined shear modulus and the impact force arm on the stubble.

Results. There has been found obtained the expression for breaking sunflower stubble
during vertical tillage with a developed turbodisc cultivator. There has been proposed a method for embedding stubble of tall-stemmed plants in the soil.

Discussion and Conclusion. To increase the efficiency of embedding stubble of tall crops in the soil, it is necessary to use optimal placement height of the working organs, taking into account the initial breaking degree. 

Introduction. Chlorophyll plays a crucial role in absorbing and transforming light energy into a chemical form that provides organic matter production in plants. Monitoring of chlorophyll content helps to assess plant-environment interactions and the degree of influence of stress factors that are essential for yield management. Traditional laboratory methods of analyzing are time-consuming, destroying samples and unsuitable for rapid field evaluations. A more reasonable solution is to use lowcost, portable devices.

Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at developing and training an ANN architecture to predict the chlorophyll content in plant leaves based on their optical density within specific visible spectrum ranges.

Materials and Methods. The artificial neural network dataset was compiled from experi- mental measurements using the DP-1M densitometer and the CCM-200 chlorophyll meter. Data were collected from lettuce, pepper, tomato and zucchini leaves of different ages, which were grown in different light environments. The artificial neural network training was carried out in the Google Colab environment with subsequent adaptation of the model for using in a microcontroller device – a photocolorimeter for leaves.

Results. The dataset with 1,000 entries showed that the leaf optical density range is
from 0.57 to 2.54 relative units (red), from 0.9 to 1.66 relative units (green), and from 1.09 to 3.53 relative units (blue). According to these data, the chlorophyll content variations are from 3.1 to 156.5 relative units. In the study, there were compared six artificial neural network architectures that differed by hidden-layer neurons. The structure “32:32” had the highest accuracy (MAE = 6.64 rel. units, MAPE = 16.34%, R² = 0.8886). A simplified structure “4:4” was selected to simplify the model and improve the microcontroller efficiency. This structure maintained the performance (MAE = 6.83 rel. units, MAPE = 16.86%, R² = 0.8808) with much smaller amount of resources used – 41 weight parameters and 164 bytes of memory. A comparative evaluation with classical machine learning algorithms demonstrated the superiority of the developed model across all metrics.

Discussion and Conclusion. The trained artificial neural network was implemented on a microcontroller-based photocolorimeter for leaves that enabled the non-destroying optical density measurements. The developed model allows implementing non-destroying and operational monitoring of the condition of plants, which is especially important in precision farming systems. This approach has significant potential for ecological monitoring and precision agriculture. The study results demonstrate the viability of machine learning for improving plant status assessment and developing digital agrotechnology solutions.

Introduction. One of the most effective technologies for removing dispersed impurities from gas is liquid purification, because inertial separators cannot capture fine particles. The challenge arises of increasing the efficiency of gas-dispersed media purification using this method. One way to solve this challenge is determining the injection angle of the droplet fractions at which the coagulation process will be most effective.

Aim of the Study. The aim of the academic work was to study the effect of the injection direction of the droplet fraction jet on the intensity of the absorption of solid particles by liquid droplets.

Materials and Methods. To describe the flow of a multiphase medium, there was used a continual approach for modeling the dynamics of inhomogeneous media, which involves solving a complete hydrodynamic system of motion equations for each mixture components. The dispersed phase was modeled as a multifractional polydisperse one; the dispersed phase fractions may differ in both the material density and the size of dispersed particles. There were taken into account interphase heat exchange and momentum exchange including the aerodynamic drag force, the dynamic Archimedes force, and the added mass force. The dynamics of the carrier medium was described by the Navier–Stokes system of equations for a viscous, compressible heat-conducting gas. The mathematical model also took into account the collisional coagulation of particles of different fractions. The system of the mathematical model equations was supplemented with boundary conditions. An explicit finite-difference method was used to integrate the equations of the mathematical model. A nonlinear correction scheme was used to overcome numerical oscillations.

Results. There was simulated the injection of droplet fractions into a dust-laden flow at various angles to the channel wall. It has been found that the most intense decrease in the average density of the dust fraction is observed for an angle of φ = π/2. For gas-droplet flow injection angles of φ and π–φ, the distributions of the volumetric contents of the dust fraction are similar. The calculations have shown that for a wide range of droplet fraction sizes the highest velocity slip is observed for droplet injection perpendicular to the direction of dust-laden flow.

Discussion and Conclusion. The identified patterns allow us to determine the injection direction of droplet fractions that maximizes the absorption of solid particles. The results can be used to optimize liquid purification technologies for gas-dispersed media. In the future, these results can be used to improve the efficiency of gas-liquid filters.

Introduction. Comparing the effects of outages in electrical networks of different voltage classes is important for developing strategies for their design and construction. The main scientific problem when choosing such strategies arises from the contradiction between the need to increase the reliability of equipment and structures of electrical networks of all voltage classes and to minimize capital investments and operating costs. A comparison based on specific indicators is more visual and makes it possible to scale the results obtained. Thus, it is an urgent task to assess the specific indicators of the consequences of outages in 110 kV electrical networks for their subsequent comparison with similar indicators for networks of other voltage classes.

Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at conducting a comparative analysis of specific reliability indexes characterizing the consequences of outages in 110 kV and 0.4 kV electrical networks.

Materials and Methods. There were analyzed the statistical data of emergency and planned outages in 110 kV electrical networks in the Oryol region for the period from 2018 to 2023. The initial data were taken from the outage log books for the branch of PJSC Rosseti Centre – Oryolenergo. The total length of the electrical networks considered was more than 1.7 thousand kilometers. Specific reliability indexes characterizing the consequences of outages in 110 kV electrical networks were determined and compared with similar indexes for 0.4 kV electrical networks.

Results. The study revealed that the consequences of emergency outages in the 110 kV electrical networks in terms of specific disconnected electrical power indicator per one outage in 110 kV electrical networks are on average about 50 times greater than the consequences of outages in the 0.4 kV electrical networks and taking into account all causes of outages – 17.5 times. The average specific time of emergency interruptions per one outage in 0.4 kV electrical networks is more than 5 times greater than in 110 kV electrical networks. Specific undersupply of electrical power per one consumer in 0.4 kV electrical networks is greater than in 110 kV electrical networks by more than 2,160 times taking into account all causes of disconnections while specific electrical power undersupply peroutage disconnection in 0.4 kV electrical networks is 18 times greater. The average total undersupply of electrical power for all reasons in 0.4 kV electrical networks is more than 7,500 times greater than the same indicator for 110 kV electrical networks.

Discussion and Conclusion. The total annual consequences of accidents in 0.4 kV electrical networks are greater than the consequences of accidents in 110 kV electrical networks. It is necessary to revise the design standards for 0.4 kV electrical networks increasing the requirements for the reliability of their design and creating opportunities for configuration management, primarily for the purpose of automatic standby electrical power supply to consumers. This will significantly reduce damage to both rural consumers and power grid operators.