Improvements to a sugarcane road transportation system

2011 ◽  
pp. 471-475
Author(s):  
A.L. Gómez ◽  
D.F. Cobo ◽  
P.W. Castro ◽  
C.H. Isaacs

Among the costs of the whole cane sugar and ethanol production system, the activities covered by harvesting (manual and mechanical), road transportation and cane unloading are the most expensive category of operations. A comprehensive study of the cane transport system, which covers topics from system logistics to cane bin design, is being undertaken for the Colombian sugar industry. Models for predicting fuel consumption have been developed and tested using techniques such as GPS (Global Positioning System), pull load and direct fuel flow measurements for the complete operational cycles. Sensitivity trials have also been performed to analyze the influence of bin mass on fuel consumption in the complete cycle and FEA (Finite Element Analysis) modeling has been applied to the design and construction of new equipment. Results show that reductions of 5% of fuel costs are achieved with the 10% structural mass reduction achieved.

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-179
Author(s):  
Carmen Maria Coimbra Manhães ◽  
Ricardo Ferreira Garcia ◽  
Delorme Correa Júnior ◽  
Francisco Maurício Alves Francelino ◽  
Cristóbal Soto Solano ◽  
...  

Studies have shown that using higher operational capacity harvesters render less fuel consumption per harvested area and, as a result, less operating expenses. This paper aims to obtain the effective fuel consumption per hour of the CASE IH A4000 harvester during the mechanical harvest of raw sugar cane. The study took place in a sugar cane plantation with mechanical harvest in an area belonging to a producer for Coagro (Cooperativa Agroindustrial do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Ltda.) (Agroindustrial Cooperative of the State of Rio de Janeiro), in the municipality of Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro/Brazil. The variety of sugar cane was evaluated at RB867515 in its third cut. The system of automatic data acquisition was built from a volumetric flow sensor to determine the fuel flow, in addition to a data collector (Datalogger) and a global positioning system (GPS) device. To determine the fuel consumption per hour, data from the fuel flow sensor were used. The consumption per hour of fuel was 33.9 L.h-1. The effective consumption was estimated in 1.84 L. ton-1. The consumption per hour and the effective consumption of the CASE IH A4000 were more than double of what the manufacturers stipulated, which means, the consumption is much higher than desirable.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 496-506
Author(s):  
POMPEU PAES GUIMARÃES ◽  
JULIO EDUARDO ARCE ◽  
EDUARDO DA SILVA LOPES ◽  
ALLAN LIBANIO PELISSARI ◽  
GABRIELA SALAMI ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT: As fuel costs increase, it is essential to take measures involving planning and control on any activities with high consumption. Thus, the main aim of this work was modeling the fuel consumption of forest road transportation by truck. We collected data about time, driving distance, average speed, fuel consumption and the load carried by the vehicle for loaded trips, unloaded trips, and the total cycle of forest transport in regions between the municipality of Campo do Tenente (forest site) and Piên (factory) located in Paraná state, Brazil. The Pearson's correlation was used to determine the relationship between variables, while the Stepwise procedure was used to generate regression equations to estimate fuel consumption. The highest correlations were found between fuel consumption and driving distance, average speed and liquid weight of the load; also, there was a significant correlation between driving distance and average speed. Adjusted equations were statistically adequate to estimate fuel consumption based on driving distance, liquid weight of the load, average speed and duration time for loaded trips, unloaded trips and the total forest road transportation cycle.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Dinc ◽  
Yousef Gharbia

Abstract In this study, exergy efficiency calculations of a turboprop engine were performed together with main performance parameters such as shaft power, specific fuel consumption, fuel flow, thermal efficiency etc., for a range of flight altitude (0–14 km) and flight speeds (0–0.6 Mach). A novel exergy efficiency formula was derived in terms of specific fuel consumption and it is shown that these two parameters are inversely proportional to each other. Moreover, a novel exergy efficiency and thermal efficiency relation was also derived. The relationship showed that these two parameters are linearly proportional to each other. Exergy efficiency of the turboprop engine was found to be in the range of 23–33%. Thermal efficiency of the turboprop engine was found to be around 25–35%. Exergy efficiency is higher at higher speeds and altitude where the specific fuel consumption is lower. Conversely, exergy efficiency of the engine is lower for lower speeds and altitude where the specific fuel consumption is higher.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 8066
Author(s):  
Thowayeb H. Hassan ◽  
Abu Elnasr E. Sobaih ◽  
Amany E. Salem

The cost of fuel and its availability are among the most major concerns for aircrafts and the aviation industry overall. Environmental difficulties with chemical pollutant emissions emitted by aviation machines are also connected to fuel consumption. As a result, it is crucial to examine factors that affect the overall fuel usage and consumption in the airport-based aviation industry. Several variables were investigated related to the total fuel consumed, such as dry operating weight (DOW) (KG), zero-fuel weight (ZFW), take-off weight (TOW), air distance (AIR DIST) (KM), and ground distance (GDN DIST). Analysis of the correlation between total fuel consumed as well as the extra fuel and selected variables was conducted. The results showed that the most positively associated factors with the total used fuel were the air distance (r2 = 0.86, p < 0.01), ground distance (r2 = 0.78, p < 0.01), TOW (r2 = 0.68, p < 0.01), and flight time (r2 = 0.68, p < 0.01). There was also a strong positive association between the average fuel flow (FF) and actual TOW (r2 = 0.74, p < 0.01) as well as ZFW (r2 = 0.61, p < 0.01). The generalized linear model (GLM) was utilized to assess the predictions of total energy usage after evaluating important outliers, stability of the homogeneity of variance, and the normalization of the parameter estimation. The results of multiple linear regression revealed that the most significant predictors of the total consumed fuel were the actual ZFW (p < 0.01), actual TOW (p < 0.01), and actual average FF (p < 0.05). The results interestingly confirmed that wind speed has some consequences and effects on arrival fuel usage. The result reflects that thermal and hydrodynamic economies impact on the flying fuel economy. The research has various implications for both scholars and practitioners of aviation industry.


2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulbe Bosma

AbstractEver since the interregnum from 1811 to 1816 of Lieutenant Governor General Stamford Raffles, British trading interests had been firmly established in colonial Indonesia. The implementation of the Cultivation System in 1830 on Java by the Dutch colonial government was an attempt to bring this potentially rich colony under Dutch economic control, but it is usually considered a departure from the principles of economic liberalism and a phase during which private entrepreneurs were barred from the emerging plantation economy. However, on the basis of census data and immigration records, and with reference to recent literature on the development of the nineteenth-century sugar industry, this article argues that British trading houses present on Java in the early nineteenth century continued to play an important role in the development of the production there of tropical goods, and that the emerging plantation economy attracted a modest influx of technicians and employees from various European nations. This article proposes to consider the Cultivation System and private enterprise not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary in making the cane sugar industry of Java the second largest in the world after that of Cuba.


Author(s):  
Guilherme Medeiros Soares de Andrade ◽  
Fernando Wesley Cavalcanti de Araújo ◽  
Maurício Pereira Magalhães de Novaes Santos ◽  
Silvio Jacks dos Anjos Garnés ◽  
Fábio Santana Magnani

Standard driving cycles are usually used to compare vehicles from distinct regions, and local driving cycles reproduce more realistic conditions in specific regions. In this article, we employed a simple methodology for developing local driving cycles and subsequently performed a kinematic and energy analysis. As an application, we employed the methodology for cars and motorcycles in Recife, Brazil. The speed profile was collected using a smartphone (1 Hz) validated against a high precision global positioning system (10 Hz), presenting a mean absolute error of 3 km/h. The driving cycles were thus developed using the micro-trip method. The kinematic analysis indicated that motorcycles had a higher average speed and acceleration (32.5 km/h, 0.84 m/s2) than cars (22.6 km/h, 0.55 m/s2). As a result of the energy analysis, it was found that inertia is responsible for most of the fuel consumption for both cars (59%) and motorcycles (41%), but for motorcycles the aerodynamic drag is also relevant (36%). With regards to fuel consumption, it was found that the standard driving cycle used in Brazil (FTP-75; 2.47 MJ/km for cars and 0.84 MJ/km for motorcycles) adequately represents the driving profile for cars (2.46 MJ/km), and to a lesser extent motorcycles (0.91 MJ/km) in off-peak conditions. Finally, we evaluated the influence of the vehicle category on energy consumption, obtaining a maximum difference of 38% between a 2.0 L sports utility vehicle and a 1.0 L hatchback.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin C. Hayes ◽  
Gregory L. Whiting

Abstract Permanent magnet direct drive (PMDD) electric machines are advantageous due to higher efficiencies and lower maintenance concerns. For wind turbine generators, especially offshore turbines, this is advantageous to geared machines and is currently implemented by manufacturers such as GE, Siemens and Enercon. By nature, a direct drive machine must be larger than its geared counterpart in order to output the same power. As a result, the structural mass is larger and makes the machine prohibitively large. However, the structural mass and electromagnetic design is coupled and the electromagnetic criteria are an important consideration in the structural design. In this analysis, the electromagnetic design of a 5 MW PMDD generator was coupled to a triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) lattice generator through means of an evolutionary algorithm. Finite element analysis (FEA) was used to determine the radial, torsional, and axial deformations under simulated wind turbine generator loading conditions subject to critical deflection criteria. Lattice functional grading was completed with the FEA deflection data in order to further optimize the structural mass. For the 5 MW test case, functional graded TPMS support structures maintained stiffness for a generator with a 32% higher force density with inactive mass 4% lower than baseline. This study suggests functional grading of TPMS lattice structures for wind turbine generators has the potential at significant mass savings.


Author(s):  
B. A. Haberman ◽  
A. J. Marquis

A typical segmented-in-series tubular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) consists of flattened ceramic support tubes with rows of electrochemical cells fabricated on their outer surfaces connected in series. It is desirable to design this type of SOFC to operate with a uniform electrolyte current density distribution to make the most efficient use of the available space and possibly to help minimize the onset of cell component degradation. Predicting the electrolyte current density distribution requires an understanding of the many physical and electrochemical processes occurring, and these are simulated using the newly developed SOHAB multiphysics computer code. Of particular interest is the interaction between the current flow within the cells and the consumption of fuel from an adjacent internal gas supply channel. Initial simulations showed that in the absence of fuel consumption, ionic current tends to concentrate near the leading edge of each electrolyte. Further simulations that included fuel consumption showed that the choice of fuel flow direction can have a strong effect on the current flow distribution. The electrolyte current density distribution is biased toward the upstream fuel flow direction because ionic current preferentially flows in regions rich in fuel. Thus the correct choice of fuel flow direction can lead to more uniform electrolyte current density distributions, and hence it is an important design consideration for tubular segmented-in-series SOFCs. Overall, it was found that the choice of fuel flow direction has a negligible effect on the output voltage of the fuel cells.


Author(s):  
Antonio Paolozzi ◽  
Ferdinando Felli ◽  
Cristian Vendittozzi ◽  
Claudio Paris ◽  
Hiroshi Asanuma

Pipelines for oil distribution may affect the environment when natural disasters such as landslides and earthquakes damage the infrastructures. Besides natural causes, illegal extraction of oil from the pipelines can produce significant environmental damage and sometimes loss of lives from explosions. During the spill, the fuel flow of the main stream theoretically reduces, but this variation is within the normal flow fluctuation and so it is not possible to detect this illegal activity using fuel flow measurements. Transducers based on Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors are very attractive for pipeline monitoring. In two previous works we proposed a new transducer for increasing the sensitivity of FBG sensors to detect illegal activities on the pipelines (drilling). In fact FBG sensors attached directly on the surface of the pipe are not capable to detect strain variations induced by a drill. This paper reports an update on the experimental results obtained on a real size pipeline and a theoretical study aimed to explain why a surface attached sensor does not work.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 155014771878175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrukh Ashraf ◽  
Priyanka Aggarwal ◽  
Praveen Damacharla ◽  
Hong Wang ◽  
Ahmad Y Javaid ◽  
...  

The ability of an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle to navigate and fly precisely determines its utility and performance. The current navigation systems are highly dependent on the global positioning system and are prone to error because of global positioning system signal outages. However, advancements in onboard processing have enabled inertial navigation algorithms to perform well during short global positioning system outages. In this article, we propose an intelligent optical flow–based algorithm combined with Kalman filters to provide the navigation capability during global positioning system outages and global positioning system–denied environments. Traditional optical flow measurement uses block matching for motion vector calculation that makes the measurement task computationally expensive and slow. We propose the application of an artificial bee colony–based block matching technique for faster optical flow measurements. To effectively fuse optical flow data with inertial sensors output, we employ a modified form of extended Kalman filter. The modifications make the filter less noisy by utilizing the redundancy of sensors. We have achieved an accuracy of ~95% for all non-global positioning system navigation during our simulation studies. Our real-world experiments are in agreement with the simulation studies when effects of wind are taken into consideration.


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