Abstract:
Soil disinfection technology has translated into a well-established commercial application with a mature market. However, most conventional disinfection methods, such as chemical and biological types, cannot meet the current harsh multiple needs of soil disinfection in modern digital agriculture. Therefore, this paper focuses on the latest application requirements for modern digital soil disinfection, to analyze the significant effects and typical defects of conventional disinfection methods, and finally proposes the idea: translating the emerging radio frequency heating technology into the application field of soil disinfection and the new design of advanced equipment. Five sections include in this paper. 1) The components, classification, heating performance and influence factors were summarized in the radio frequency (RF) heating system. 2) The application status of RF heating and disinfection technology was classify based on the various widely-used fields from industry, textile lighting, medical treatment, forestry product processing, agricultural and sideline product processing. The development processes of disinfection, sterilization, drying and thawing for agricultural and sideline products were analyzed, in order to clarify the main reasons for the RF uniform heating in the agricultural production line. 3) A RF heating experimental platform was also established in a laboratory environment, where preliminary trial tests of soil heating were performed using various types of electrode structures. The test results show that the structure of electrode poses a significant effect on the heating performance of the soil, which can be a key influence factor on the uneven heating. 4) This section covers a systematical analysis on the existing research related to the soil heating test under laboratory conditions, including the heating mechanism of the RF heating system, the heating characteristics of the soil materials, the matching features of the materials and the RF, the application shortcomings, the main causes, and the update methods for the physical heating method, and then proposes some suggestions to improve much more uniform RF heating in soil disinfection field. 5) According to the identification and assessment for the RF heating applications in other fields, this section proposes a separate design idea for field soil and organic soil RF heating disinfection equipment, several electrode structures in RF heating disinfection, and matching schemes for heated soil materials and heating parameters, for the future application of RF heating to soil heating disinfection. Since a variety of commercial simulation platforms for RF heating disinfection have emerged as the in-depth progress of the theory and technology, translating the soil RF heating into specific application based on the commercial simulation platforms would have played a direct and important role to accelerate the equipment development and shorten the development cycle, thereby saving the investment in research and the intensity of experimental labor. This overview can provide a sound guidance for the design and production of equipment in the field of soil RF disinfection.