GRANULOMETRIC STUDY OF NPK 20-8-8 AND DOLOPHOS FERTILIZERS

Abstract

Physical properties of commercial fertilizers play important role from precision application point of view. Granulometric evaluation is usually performed by sieve separation according ČSN 01 5030 standard. The main subject of this work is the presentation of separation results when vertical airflow is used with NPK 20-8-8 and Dolophos fertilizers. The sample was divided into 8 individual specimens of 0.5 kg weight that was measured repeatedly. Every class of the specimen was than sieved on the sieves with holes 2 mm, 3.5 mm, and 5 mm resulting four new subclasses characterized by the sieve mesh dimension. It was achieved by statistical evaluation that relative frequencies are in agreement with N-distribution. It is clear from achieved values that in NPK 20-8-8 fertilizer samples there are 92.25 % of particles with dimension from 3.15 to 5 mm and 7.0 % with dimension from 2 to 3.15 mm. In fertilizer Dolophos there are 50.87 % of particles with dimension from 3.15 to 5 mm and 47.54% with dimension from 2 to 3.15 mm.

Keywords: airflow, fertilizer, granulometry, particle, sorting.

Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2015.010