Parker Hannifin, a specialist in motion and control technologies, has supplied a hydraulics product to VDL Steelweld for use in its new environmentally-friendly soil treatment machine. The Parker components are enabling the Cultivit machines to offer effective and reliable operation in harsh outdoor conditions, and are also helping to increase crop yields by up to 150%.
With environmental awareness growing globally, many soil treatment processes involving harmful chemicals have now been banned or restricted. To overcome this problem, VDL Steelweld, part of an international industrial group focusing on the development, production and sales of technical products, has developed a solution with considerably less environmental impact.
The Cultivit soil treatment concept is an agricultural tool used for sterilising the soil to control pathogens and pests. The rotary spader is self-propelled, driven by solid crawler tracks, and operates by vigorously mixing the soil particles with ultra-heated air, which is clean and dry at 800ºC. Heating, spading, powering and controls are all integrated functions within the machine. Therefore, to realise the Cultivit design, VDL Steelweld required a hydraulic product that was compact, robust and able to offer high performance levels.
The Parker design includes F11 motors, to drive the heater and burner fans in the Cultivit’s air treatment system, an F12 motor for the rugged rotary spader, and PGP Series gear products driving the cooling fans. The durable chassis is controlled by an L90LS valve and is driven by two T12 series track motors.
Also on the machine are two P2 pumps, a PVP pump, a manifold with PTC (Parker Threaded Cartridge valves), a welded lift cylinder, return line filters, and a Parker Racor air filter for the air intake of the diesel engine. Finally, Parker hoses and fitting are used to offer tight connections for all hydraulic and fuel components.
Furthermore, the Cultivit machines can be remotely controlled using Parker’s IQAN MDL unit and several XA2 power expansion modules. The IQAN system enables hydraulic systems to be designed and controlled, simply and quickly, for mobile equipment such as the Cultivit. The MDL unit is the central unit in the system that functions as a master controller, displaying system information and working seamlessly with the expansion modules.
Testing over three years has shown that, the Cultivit machine is able to increase crop yields by 90 to 150% by comparison with untreated fields; 55% higher than traditional soil treatments with metam sodium (MS), now a largely restricted chemical soil fumigant. These excellent results are due to the close co-operation and teamwork between Parker and VDL Steelweld throughout the project.