Developing of a New System for Short Rotation Forestry Harvesting

Abstract

During these last years we are watching a deep, structural change of the "most traditional" agricultural sector. Let's think, for example, about the OCM tobacco or about the OCM sugar which foresee the reorganization of whole productive areas and of various industrial installations. Only in the Italian region, Emilia-Romagna, within the plan of reorganization of the saccariferous, sugar beet chain, they expect the realization of a bio-mass power plant of an installed power of 30 MWe, with a catchment area of about 9000 and invested a SRF. The purpose of this work is to supply scientific, technical support for the realization of operating machines. The developed prototype can cut down the trees and put them in windrows parallel to the rows of the installation for a following chopping by choppers provided with a pick-up. The developed methodology allows to obtain a product with a lower level of humidity, so reducing the fermentative cases which were registered during the storage, to protract the harvest time of the product and to reduce the consolidation of the soil due to the passage of the picker. The prototype is a semitowed machine which can be put in front of a tractor of the minimum power of 90 kW or at the back of a tractor of the same power but provided with a reversible guide linked up to the PTO. The natural process of product dehydration put in windrows with regard to the interaction of the various factors affecting the process itself, the performance of the choppers provided with a pick-up harvesting the windrows, are reported.