Three facilities have been constructed and upgraded to determine particle size, drift and volatility stewardship. An indoor wind tunnel with a 6x6 foot working section has been constructed to measure droplet size distributions from various nozzle and formulation combinations. The indoor wind tunnel can achieve wind speeds up to 15 mph and maintain a consistent temperature and relative humidity. The size distributions measured in the tunnel are then imported into AgDisp, which predicts the downwind deposition of the spray drift. A large environmental chamber is being used to measure the volatility of active ingredients in an environmentally controlled setting. The chamber can accommodate up to 192 humi-domes (test trays) in a single batch run. Critical flow orifices are used to control the flowrate out of each humi-dome, currently set at 1.85 L/min. The air is pulled through a polyurethane foam (PUF) filter, where the active ingredient (AI) in collected. The AI is then extracted from the PUF and analyzed via LC-MS. The wind tunnel and environmental chamber facilities are designed for large throughput testing, simultaneously testing 124 formulations per week for both spray drift and volatility. Finally, an outdoor ambient breeze tunnel has been developed that can be used to replicate a field study for measurement of both spray drift and volatility during the same application event. The outdoor wind tunnel has a working cross section of 20x20 feet (semicircular above 10 feet) and is 120 feet in length. It can obtain wind speeds up to 5 mph and allows for an array of soils/crops to be brought in for testing. Initial spray drift and subsequent volatilization can be measured with an assortment of instrumentation for both deposition and air concentrations downwind of the application, e.g. glass slides, water trays, water/oil sensitive paper, monofilament lines, and PUF samplers. All three facilities operate under the ISO 9001:2008 quality management system.

Spray drift and volatilization testing facilities

254th National Meeting (2017)

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