Plasma Activated Water Generation and its Application in Agriculture

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2019, 10 (10), pp 700-704

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2019.0042

Publication Date (Web): Sep 18, 2019

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: narayana@iisc.ac.in

Abstract

Use of fossil fuels to produce nitrogenous fertilizer contributes to global warming and climate change. The plasma activated water (PAW) provides an alternative option for nitrogen supply to plant by fixing the nitrogen available in the air into the water using plasma. The PAW is a mixture of nitrate, nitrite, and hydrogen peroxide as its major constituents. In this work, an attempt was made to generate PAW using an efficient and scalable PAW generator.  Then plasma is characterized by measuring the power, and OES spectrum. This is a study in which for the first-time arc plasma has been used to demonstrate enhanced plant growth on tomato plant. The results indicate that compared to control, the plants fed with PAW activated for 30 minutes (PAW-30) have 1.5 times higher shoot length, 4 times higher leaf count and more than twice the chlorophyll content in the leaves. The wet weight of the plants fed with PAW-30 was 61% higher than that of the control. © VBRI Press.

Keywords

Plasma activated water, direct discharge plasma, energy density, tomato, chlorophyll