AUTOMATION AS A SUPPORT FOR THE OPTIMIZATION OF WATER AND ENERGY USE

Irrigated agriculture accounts for the consumption of 70% of all fresh water on the planet. There is, therefore, a need to use this scarce and vitally important resource more rationally. In the last decades, electronic devices and computers are in a growing technological advance, becoming cheaper, more precise, and with better user interface. This book had as its main objective the definition and installation of automatic equipment for irrigation control in order to compare the existing methodology, based on automatic timer, with the use of sensorial automatic and the calculation of evapotranspiration, thus making it possible to analyze the use of water and energy in the process. As methodology, the PLC was installed, man-machine interface, and programming logic routines for irrigation control were elaborated, using information from the agro-meteorological stations and the evapotranspiration calculation. The results obtained during the tests showed the reliability of the use of the programmable logic controller in the execution of the control logic and in the performance of the irrigation.