Optimizing mechanical and crop physical factors for sugarcane trash recovery at farm

Abstract

Increasing fuel prices in international market and depletion of fossil fuel resources are reasons to find new and cheap energy resources to meet increasing energy demands throughout the world. Potential energy resources include wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and biomass. Biomass can be collected from wheat, rice and sugarcane fields. Sugarcane is most abundant cultivated crop in world providing trash (leaves and tops) and baggas as renewable energy resource for power generation which can replace 50% use of fossil fuels. Because of poor sugarcane mechanization status in Pakistan, traditional practice to get rid of this extraneous material is to burn the trash in standing crop or by manual means which is hectic due to decreasing labour availability for agricultural practices. 20-30% trash is delivered to mill along with stalk due to poor cleaning efficiency resulting deduction in farmer payment and lowering mill sugar recovery efficiency. Sugarcane stripping machine was developed for small scale farmers and different mechanical and crop physical factors were investigated to improve trash recovery and to reduce labour dependence and in field burning practice on local farms during 2018-2019 at University of Agriculture Faisalabad. The investigating crop physical factors included crop varieties (V1=US-658, V2=HSF-240, V3=CPF-249), moisture content in trash (MC1=8.2, MC2=17.6) and mechanical factors included velocity ratio between intake rollers (VR1=1.3, VR2=1.7, VR3=1.9), cleaning element speeds (CE1=660 rpm, CE2=763 rpm, CE3= 1033 rpm) and intake roller combinations types (C1, C2, C3). Three replications for each factor were recorded and data was statistically analyzed under factorial design. Results revealed that by combining V1, MC1, VR2, CE3 and C3 factors, trash recovery efficiency of 97% can be achieved.