Hello

Name:Evan

Engineering Trade: Agricultural

Location: Ontario, Canada

*Occupation: Student

Work Experience: N/A

*Hobbies & Interests: Gardening, Areoponic/Fogponics, video games, working out

*Aim in life: work in an vertical farm

*I joined CrazyEngineers because:
Hello all never really done this before but here goes nothing, I am looking talk to an engineer and I have no idea what kind of engineer I am looking for, to help design piezoelectric transducer (ultrasonic fogger) made for Fogponics. Fogponics is used to grow herbs/vegetables/fruits and is a form of Aeroponics that uses a piezoelectric transducer (ultrasonic foggers) to atomize the water into particles that are micrometres in size which is the size roots absorb water at.

Water droplet size is crucial, too large a water droplet means less oxygen is available to the root system too fine a water droplet such as those generated by the ultrasonic mister (5-15 micrometres) produce excessive root hair without developing a lateral root system for sustained growth. High Pressure Areoponics makes mist of 5-50 micrometres micro-droplets which are necessary for long-term aeroponic growing.

I have done extensive research mostly using #-Link-Snipped-# which searches ICmag, Roll It Up, Grass City, THC Farmer, Cannabis, Cannabis Culture, Open Grow, Gardens Cure, 420 Magazine. Why these sites you ask because they are really the only ones with people trying out this type of system and pushing it forward. At best the information on the site is fragmented with arguments for and against fogponics, I want to compile all the data I can mine from them and put it into a clear and concise all-encompassing manual for growing using fogponics and give it back to the communities because I believe sharing/open sourcing is the best way to innovation. These are my findings so far for Fogponics

Pros for Fogponics:
-Uses less water and nutrients
-High Yield
-Growth speed on roots is amazing, large mass and very fuzzy; growth of stems is very quick as thus high turnover rate
-Versatile in how you want to set up you grow op (i.e. vertical, buckets or just in Tupperware)
-Just one unit to clean instead of mean like Aeroponics

Cons for Fogponics are:
-Foggers heats up which can destroy the nutrients and hurt the roots
-The frequency at which foggers currently vibrate create droplets 5-15 micron range which is great for seedlings as they only require water but as plants get older they require nutrients so the droplets need to be bigger (say 50 microns) to carry the nutrients.
-Ultrasonic foggers can't handle anything lager then 500 ppm because it will clog them and kills them

I have a few ideas how to fix the cons but I need to talk with someone who has working knowledge of how to design a piezoelectric transducer so see if my idea have any weight (such a switch to change the frequency so it can switch from producing 5-15 microns to 50 microns).

Sorry for the wall of text, you made to the end without passing out from boredom thanks for reading.

tl/dr Don’t know what kind of engineer to talk to but need help on how to design an piezoelectric transducers (ultrasonic fogger) to change the short comings of it for fogponics; such as changing the frequency so droplet sizes are bigger (50 microns instead of 5-15 microns) and thus can carry certain nutrients to roots, avoid overheating water and be able to handle more than 500 ppm without clogging.