Design, manufacture and field test of a surface water storage tank providing irrigation water to upland crops

Abstract

For most upland crops in Korea, underground water is used to ensure an adequate water supply. Thus, surface water storage tanks are needed to supply surface water from reservoirs or streams. This study discusses the design, manufacture and monitoring of a water storage tank capable of reliably supplying water to crops and preventing the inflow of floating debris. The study was conducted in an apple orchard in Yesan-gun, Chungcheongnam-do in Korea. Based on the water requirements of the crops and size of the orchard, a required flow volume of about 0.6 m 3 ·h-1 was determined, along with a surface water storage tank capacity of 1.2 m 3. Following a comparison with other materials, stainless steel (STS) was used to construct the water tank. The tank was designed to provide 14 hours of irrigation, enabling a small-capacity, cost-efficient tank design to be used. A surface water irrigation test was performed using the surface water storage tank. The average surface water irrigation flow rate was 0.00045 m 3 ·m-2 ·h-1. The water quality test showed that the pH, suspended solids (SS), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) values satisfied the reference values for agricultural water. The test results showed that the surface water storage tank evaluated in this study allows for crop irrigation when there is a lack of groundwater during droughts.