Improvement of water and energy use in sprinkler irrigation under semi-arid conditions

This study aims to assess the impact of sprinkler irrigation performance on the energy requirements of solid-set sprinkler irrigation systems. For this purpose, a methodology to evaluate the energy requirements for solid-set sprinkler systems was proposed. Experimental and simulated irrigation data were used to analyze the impact of water application efficiency on the energy required to distribute water on soil surface. Results show that the decrease in the water application efficiency from 81% to 69% due to deep percolation losses over the potato irrigation season greatly increases the water distribution energy (34.4%) with an increase in the energy cost (kWh per ton) of 22.4% as well as a reduction of 18% in the water use efficiency. Results indicate also that improvement of water application efficiency of irrigated tomato from 74.1% (day irrigation) to 86.8% (night irrigation) induced a reduction in the energy cost (kWh per ton) of 22.8% although the net seasonal irrigation depth for night time was larger than that for day time due to the decrease in wind drift and evaporation losses.