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Save it for the Combine
Posted by Jason Bradford on August 24, 2010 - 10:43am
I have been visiting A2R Farms outside of Corvallis Oregon all year. They are a former conventional grass seed farm transitioning to organic seed crops, primarily for local distribution. I watched as they planted the fields and as the crops grew--flax, chick peas, sunflowers and wheat. And as harvest season approached I looked over at the combines and asked my friend Clinton Lindsey, “Which one am I driving?”
So I was delighted to get a call the other morning. Over the hum of a motor Clint told me, “Hey Jason, I’m harvesting the field north of our office today if you want to visit.” Heck yeah! And I could bring the whole family. It was Saturday and we all would get a turn in the cab.
Being aware of peak oil for several years now has given me time to consider what energy dense liquid fuels are extremely useful for. In an energy scarce world we will be resetting priorities. The question for the future is what do we need to do with energy rather than what do we want to do with energy.
In this post I will nominate my top pick. If I could wave a magic wand and reserve ample future supplies of petroleum (or some precious substitute such as a biofuel with high net energy) for just one use it would be the combine.
What it Does
The combine performs tasks that replace an enormous amount of labor in a reliable and timely fashion. It cuts the stalks of seed crops, threshes the heads to dislodge the seeds, and then separates the seeds from the straw and chaff. Without the combine (and a series of intermediate technologies), harvesting grains involves manually cutting stalks, bundling them, transporting the bundle to storage, threshing and winnowing.
The labor efficiency of the combine is extreme. Over the course of a long and somewhat boring 12 hour day in his air conditioned cab (made a little better by listening to audio books on an iPod), Clint can harvest about 25 acres of wheat. We visited while he was in a field with a hard red variety that yields about 2400 lbs per acre (soft white yields are 2-3 times higher). In one day, Clint and his machine will collect 60,000 lbs of hard red wheat, or 1000 bushels.
Each pound of wheat contains about 1500 food calories (i.e., kilo calories), and a person needs about 2500 calories per day. A year’s supply of calories for a person is in the neighborhood of 900,000, which in wheat units is 600 lbs. In simple terms, during a day of work Clint can supply the annual food needs of 100 people. Of course he and his dad Mike also spent days prepping and sowing the field, and there are hours planning, maintaining equipment, and marketing, etc., but in total the amount of time actually spent with machines on that 25 acres is probably only a week or so. And since Clint and his family manage to farm several hundred acres it all works out to about 100 people fed by one guy like Clint, which is typical for the US food system.
I propose that the main enabler of a demographic shift away from rural-agrarian populations to an urban-industrial one is the combine. The combine removes most labor from agriculture for the most critical crops: edible grains, legumes and oil seeds. Seeds are a highly portable, storable and versatile class of food, allowing civilizations to trade and buffer against shortages. Most calories now consumed derive directly or indirectly from seeds.
The Hybrid Future
Looking at the above figure, it seems plausible that in the US we could do away with ¾ of our per capita energy and, if we allocate smartly, keep the combines running and continue to feed everybody with little extra labor (and assuming climate change doesn’t bite too sharply into yields).
I do have mixed feelings about how the historical shift into cities and away from farms has impacted our culture. On the one hand, surplus food has permitted our society to specialize greatly, developing technologies, arts and forms of entertainment that I truly enjoy. Material abundance may also have led to cultural openness and flexibility, or what may be called liberalism, as opposed to the rigidity, isolation and xenophobia common to many pre-industrial societies.
On the other hand, I am certainly no fan of the over-consumptive lifestyles and the disconnection from nature endemic to highly industrialized cultures. However, one possible future entails a larger agrarian population as industrialized countries lose access to abundant fossil fuels. For example, even if we manage to save fuel for the combines, more labor will still be needed for plenty of other tasks. While this is likely to be a painful process, what could emerge is greater ecological awareness—the understanding that our livelihoods are deeply connected and dependent upon natural processes. Such a path is described in some detail by David Holmgren in Future Scenarios.
If energy descent extends over the next few-several decades (as argued by John Michael Greer) our economy will have hybrid characteristics—leveraging the value of existing infrastructure and machinery as long as possible while learning how to adapt to natural rhythms. Keeping such a transition as benign as feasible requires food supply stability. Maintaining social cohesion gives the population time to adjust to the new normal. Combines, I would argue, are a fantastic tool for obtaining surplus food. We should keep them running during any potential phase of “scarcity industrialism.”
Energy Returned
Obviously, combines are entirely reliant on barrels and barrels of liquid fuel. Clint told me he uses about 50 gallons of fuel for every 8-9 hours harvesting wheat, which would cover about 17 acres. This means it takes around three gallons of diesel fuel per acre, just for the harvest. In standard energy terms three gallons of diesel contains 0.44 Giga Joules (GJ). For comparison, 2400 lbs of wheat contains just over 15 GJ of edible energy. Ignoring all the other energy needed to deliver the fuel to the farm, and get the crop to maturity, the harvest-only EROI is a highly profitable 34:1. (For a more thorough review of energy in the US food system see this post).
Liquid fuels are absolutely essential for industrial farming systems. I worry less about nitrogen fertilizer inputs, herbicides and pesticides, as these can be dramatically reduced using organic and agroecological methods. It is much more difficult to substantially decrease liquid fuel usage. Even with no-till methods, tractors make passes to sow seeds, and they make passes to harvest.
Unless you relish the idea of your descendants living a life akin to Little House on the Prairie, it may be prudent to cut back a bit on oil consumption today and extend the reserves of fossil fuels as long as possible. Time is second to oil on my list of most precious resources. A slowing down today, when we have so much excess, potentially buys a lot of time for tomorrow. I don’t know if we will use this time to develop liquid fuel substitutes for fossil fuels to run combines, or manufacture millions of scythes and train a whole generation to use them.
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Why is everyone ignoring crop byproducts as potential fuel supplies?
Wheat straw yields are often in excess of 2 tons/ac (maize is considerably more productive). At 15.8 million BTU/ton, this straw has as much potential energy of combustion as 225 gallons of diesel fuel. Even a very inefficient conversion system (e.g. straw to charcoal, charcoal gasified to motor fuel) would supply the tractor for planting and combine for harvesting with plenty left over.
Powering farm machinery without oil is not the problem some people say it is; it's the rest of society that can't make do with the relative paucity of energy we get as biomass.
Part of the agricultural crop cycle involves the return of the so-called "crop waste" back to the soil. If this biomass is removed, the problem of maintaining soil productivity becomes greater. More nutrients must be added to the soil if the straw is removed and that requires additional inputs of fuel for the machines.
Of course, if the straw were to be used locally, the return trip back to the land becomes much simpler. That straw could be pressed into pellets and burned directly, either for local heating needs on the farm or to power small boilers for production of electricity. Straw pellets are relatively easy to move and store, thus could be useful as a backup for the other alternative energy sources, which suffer because they are intermittent. The technology for production is well developed and available in small sizes for local use...
EDIT: Also, see this article posted on yesterday's Drumbeat.
E. Swanson
Part of the agricultural crop cycle involves the return of the so-called "crop waste" back to the soil.
I believe EP has been made aware of this in the past and has come around to accepting such a position.
power small boilers for production of electricity.
http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/20hpse.htm
http://www.steamboating.net/page7.html
$10,000 ish for a boiler/steam engine/genset looks to be the price and for that you get something that can blow up and kill ya. Whee!
The number one reason for a boiler explosion is tampering with pressure relief valves. These valves can be as simple and reliable as those on a kitchen pressure cooker. The only case of a boiler explosion I have heard of in the last several decades was due to a relief valve that was deliberately tied down. Watch the water level and maintain safety valves and a boiler explosion is next to impossible.
Granpa used to use the maize stalks and waste to make silage to feed to the cattle.
They really liked their fermented fodder with molasses.
That's another point. If removal of stalks as feed straw or silage doesn't destroy soil, how can return of some of the minerals (including phosphorus) as ash cause damage? Don't ruminants remove the energy of the biomass for their own use? The arguments against self-fuelled farm machinery are always dodging inconvenient facts like that.
how can return of some of the minerals (including phosphorus) as ash cause damage? .... The arguments against self-fuelled farm machinery are always dodging inconvenient facts like that.
The ash will have a different pH than manure from the cow. (as in you make soap from ash. I know of no soap from manure recipes) Proper compost should be pH6.5-7. So yes, ash on the land CAN "damage" things via simple acid/base chemistry.
And there is no dodging.
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~blpprt/bestwoodash.html
It has shown that wood ash has a liming effect of between 8 and 90% of the total neutralizing power of lime and can increase plant growth up to 45% over traditional limestone.
I'd like to see the analysis of the effects of using "wood gas" on engine life posted by the pro-self-fueled farm machinery crowd. My memory about burning landfill gas has ICE's and boilerboxes getting trashed in a hurry. The effects of bio-diesel and WVO are documented as is alcohol.
I believe the pretender to the legacy of George Orwell has been made aware that regular burning was one of the mechanisms which helped form the deep, fertile soils of the American prairie, and removing a small fraction of the straw and stover to return it as ash isn't going to change much. Charring all of e.g. corn stover not needed for erosion control and drilling the part not used for fuel into the soil (perhaps in the process of planting seed) would add large amounts of persistent soil carbon and eventually form terra preta. Crops which require straw to be removed or burned to control pests or diseases (e.g. rice grown in California) would be ideal for this, as the controlled process would generate far less air pollution than open burning.
That's a good reason to use the internal combustion engines everyone already has; gasogenes run at atmospheric pressure and do not present explosion hazards.
Straw theft is omen for the future of food
My own view is that biomass is needed for soil and environmental remediation. It isn't a waste or surplus product and therefore cannot be removed from the agricultural system. Its removal can only further degrade the soils upon which we ultimately all depend, it's therefore more important than the production of energy which is mainly used for hedonistic and frivolous purposes.
Not only that, but as energy availability declines, agriculture will require ever more biomass to sustain production. It cannot be an input into both agricultural and energy generating systems as there is likely insufficient available for either purpose to begin with.
Unless you attribute some magical property to animal feces (vitalism, long since disproven) the difference between grazing and return of ash isn't going to be all that large.
difference between grazing and return of ash isn't going to be all that large.
If you've stripped the Carbon from it - yes it will be large.
Not to mention the manure has different microbes plus whatever went up the chimney in a burning process. (I've not looked into what goes up the chimney...things like Mercury would, in theory, go up the smokestack to become someone elses problem. In the case of heavy metals the animal should bio-filter them....)
The Carbon balance in the plant material and sources would need to be modeled. I have no idea of Dr. Inghram has done this - it strikes me as up her alley.
Would not any process to make the biomass into fuel have a residue that could be used for replenishing the soil?
Yes, but we also have laws of conservation of mass and energy; mass and energy are not created or destroyed (outside a nuclear reactor), just transformed.
Material which is turned into fuel is not available as material for soil, energy which is removed from the material is not available to the soil, either.
Because of conservation of matter and energy, if you take things out of the loop, it spirals down into nothing. Now in fact an agricultural system is not closed, energy comes in from sunlight. So you may not take out more energy from the crops than comes in from sunlight. If you do, you must put more energy in from outside, for example in the form of natural gas turned into artificial fertiliser.
Putting things another way: when we draw on fossil fuels, we are drawing on millions of years of sunlight energy; when we draw on crops, we are drawing on a single year of sunlight energy.
This does not mean that fuel from crops is impossible. But it does mean that the return on energy invested is not as high as it might otherwise be.
We are not going to fuel the world with biofuels, not at our current level of consumption of 80+ million barrels a day. But fuelling the agricultural machinery is certainly possible.
Think of it this way: in the 19th century, about 1/4 the agricultural land was put down in pasture to feed the horses which helped plough and harvest the other 3/4 of the land. So if biofuels strictly for agricultural machinery can be got from 1/4 or less the agricultural land, we'll be in a similar or better position.
But biofuels so that we can continue to have a couple of billion cars in the world? Not going to happen, even if we put the world on grain rations.
If the 'only' thing taken off the land was Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen (say Booze) - you could eventually strip the soil of Carbon - something that is needed in the soil.
The need for Carbon is why Dr. Inghram thinks terra perta is bunk.
I thought that plants convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere along with water from soil using energy from sunlight to produce carbohydrates? Where does the carbon come from in hydroponic systems? Is there a special carbon component to the nutrients added to the water or am I mistaken?
It's true that carbon comes from the air. However, soil is not merely a lifeless medium, but has all sorts of worms and bacteria and so on in it. So that soil needs a structure. Some soils have more sand, some more clay, some are in between and called "loam". A soil of pure sand tends not to hold water; a soil of pure clay holds water but won't release it. Different plants grow best in different conditions, but our major food crops are grown in loam.
More carbon in sandy soil will help it hold water and nutrients, more carbon in clay soils breaks them releasing the existing nutrients. Letting carbon be added to the soil makes it better able to hold water and thus nutrients, minerals and so on, and encourages the growth of bacteria, fungi etc which complement the growth of the food crop. The decay of the organic matter of the crop residue encourages those organisms, and they enrich the soil, for example adding nitrogen to it (which is why when crop residues are removed, we need to add artificial nitrogen fertiliser).
Removing carbon from the soil means that over time it will erode, so that the topsoil blows away in the heat or washes away in the wet, exposing the bedrock or hard clay beneath.
There's a reason we haven't converted a large part of the world's food production to hydroponics: loamy soil is a very good medium for storing water and nutrients, and it requires that as much as possible of the plant grown is left behind in the soil.
There is no nitrogen in alcohol, this is the major loss from the land during intense farming. So this seems sustainable to me theoretically for biofuels. Well it's a thought, could I do it in practice? Probably not.
I believe one should worry less about nitrogen than the other elements needed. After all, nitrogen is air born and biological processes can bring it back to the soil.
On the other hand, burned straw reveals ash, which are non-combustible minerals from the soil. To be replenished, mined fertilizers or imported manures need to be mechanically applied, or you look forward to the periodic flood to deposit new silt, or a volcanic eruption, etc.
There is no nitrogen in alcohol,
Its in Guinness and that is why 9 out of 10 beer weeds* prefer Guinness!
* That plant the frat pours beer over and it thrives - a beer weed.
Tahnsk for the explanation. I'm not much of a farmer/gardener but it certainly made intuitve sense to me to increase the carbon content of soils. I just didn't really understand the reasons for it. NPK makes good sense too. Most of the coalitions carbon reduction scheme centres around sequestering carbon in soil which I don't think will be a bad thing (even though it won't do much, if anything for climate change mitigation)if they get in.
I was after some straw recently for mulch/soil improvement, so I asked the farmer I buy wheat from if he had any. He said he hadn't because most of his farm has sandy soil and he ploughs it all back into the soil. He's a good farmer, most of the others sell off all their straw, leave their land to degrade and depend on chemicals to fix any production problems.
If there is any problem with the chemical inputs due either to affordability or availability, then most farms around here would have a massive yield collapse. Economically, the land would have to be abandoned.
Interesting, a few posts back I read about many home gardens that were doing well, almost all of them mentioned using neighbors waste grass clippings and leaves to supplement their own compost. So if we all did it, there would be a case of trash becoming treasure and maybe it would not be so easy.
At 15.8 million BTU/ton, this straw has as much potential energy of combustion as 225 gallons of diesel fuel.
Except the straw is not portable like the oil.
(and so others don't need to back-calculate 7.15 lbs of diesel a gallon -> 1608.75 lbs of diesel)
Even a very inefficient conversion system (e.g. straw to charcoal, charcoal gasified to motor fuel)
And that hunk of EQ is gonna cost how much? The 'future of farming' was going to be pelletized hay - making pellet fuel can be done but the EQ isn't cheap. Every one of the solutions has a cost/labor needed to implement - what will be the cost/labor? Moving straw and storing it for a year/processing it into a stable form has a cost...what's that cost gonna be?
Better to look towards a model of small HP motors (thus the cables can become manageable as I am not yet hopeful over the EEStor style caps and am STILL waiting for the 2007 announcement of hydrino-batteries) and capturing the energy flow of solar energy (via PV or wind) One does not need to shovel sunlight, move it about et la. I&H farm implements has a horse drawn bar cutter that uses a small gas motor - well within a 220 volt 30 amp service range. Now you are limited to the length of your cable-tow.
You can still shoot for a liquid fuel but some are going to be more expensive than others:
1)You can take seed crop and extract the oil - feed the seed cake to your market-critters and have a fuel that works with the already in place infrastructure. A chart is here: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html You can see that few things are at the yield rate of straw. Oil press - $1000 from india 15 HP variable DC motor with controller was under $1000 when I bought it.
2)You can make booze - but you have to have a crop like sugar beets or cattails from your waste water treatment to make the booze and animals to feed the byproducts to.
3)You could try for butanol - plenty of working being done here and one company made a "straw"->butanol announcement http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/17/whisky-biobuel-scotland (Yes the announcement was not straw. But straw-like bits are a big part of spent brewers grain)
4) you can break down biomass via heat or anaerobic decomp and get a gas, then process the gas into a liquid fuel. Methanol being the lowest hanging fruit here and perhaps the most expensive EQ.
And that straw - there are other uses for it. All those parking lots can be converted to straw bale gardens. http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/straw-bale-gardening.html (That solution results in shipping soil fertility off of the land however.)
Now:
Keep in mind that the EP model would be removing ground cover that helps prevent erosion from rain/wind - so large swaths of land would have to be cut into blocks with windbreaks/places to attempt to capture rainfall. Comfrey like Bocking 14 could be planted in the windbreaks (a green manure crop where the seeds are non-viable) But putting in windbreaks takes land and getting mass plantings of Bocking 14 takes time. Going to green manure means additional labor - and even if you have green manure closing the fertility loop still needs to happen .... the fertility you ship off the farm in the form of product needs to come back somehow.
This is a general comment on this subthread:
Given the capital required to change any system radically, I am biased towards fuels that work with existing equipment.
That said, if very different systems are much more profitable energetically, then by all means test them, scale them, prove them and see if they can be adopted. We can't just wave our arms and say "It can be done like this!" The real world always throws unexpected curve balls at you and so farmers will want proof of concept before any wide adoption. And they will need the funding for any serious replacement of what they already have.
We can't just wave our arms and say "It can be done like this!"
When it comes to electric motors and vehicles....yes, we pretty much can.
Electric motors are very old, very well tested. Batteries are the only thing that aren't quite perfect, but they're more than good enough.
What sized battery set would go with a combine that runs for 12 hours a day on diesel?
Well, there will be no need to run combines on batteries since we will allocate the diesel for the combines.
But long term, yes, we can run them on batteries. Battery technology will continue to improve.
And there is no need to provide power to have them run for 12 hours. An hour could be enough. Just charge up 12 big batteries in parallel overnight. Then when you are working the field, you have a battery swap every hour to load in a new battery.
But again, that is in the long LONG term view. You won't need to do that in my lifetime since we will allocated diesel to the farms.
But long term, yes, we can run them on batteries. Battery technology will continue to improve.
Do show the battery tech that can provide the same or better energy density that diesel does.
What part of "there is no need to provide power to have them run for 12 hours" did you not understand?
And, BTW, electric motors are 90% efficient whereas diesel motors are maybe 25% efficient.
So between more 'fill-ups' and the much better efficiency of electric motors, there is no need for batteries to have the same energy density of diesel.
Batteries will NEVER have the same energy density of diesel . . but that doesn't matter.
Batteries will NEVER have the same energy density of diesel . . but that doesn't matter.
Er..yes it does. Batteries are much heavier than a tank full of diesel and they still have to be carted around, meaning that they are less efficient than the 90% of the motor efficiency you quoted. The motor will need to be substantially bigger, just to cart the battery around AND power the rest of the combine etc.
If you really want to get the entire efficiency of an electric motor, you have to take into account the primary energy from the fuel input that created the electricity, which in the case of coal fired is somewhere around 25-30%. Taking 90% efficiency at the point of use is good but does not tell the whole story.
My personal view is that CNG is a viable alternative that could be towed in a large tank behind a combine or large scale tractor with only minor modification to the diesel engines. And yes I know that will ahve an energy cost too, but the energy density of CNG is much higher than a similar size battery of any current technology.
On level, long fields once the batteries are up-to-speed then the bulk of the energy use would be for the machinery.
Lead acid batteries can already run old tractors. There's no reason much lighter lithium batteries couldn't run combines. It wouldn't be cheap, but it's doable.
I've been told these electric tractors are more proof of concept than anything. They didn't work well in the field, apparently. I have no first hand knowledge; this came from a conversation with Julian Darley.
Farm machinery requires gobs of power just about all the time, both to move the machine thru the field and to actually do the useful work.
I am not very familiar with combines, since I don't live in grain country, but this is ag and you can take this to the bank:
When the manufacturer of a combine or any piece of heavy duty industrial equipment installs a three hundred horsepower engine, it's because the machine normally needs at least seventy five percent or so of that 300 for everyday operation.
A so called three hundred horsepower automobile engine might optimistically deliver two hundred horsepower to the transmission at full throttle with the tach near the redline.The engine might with luck last a hundred hours if operated continiously in such a fashion.Once that 300 hp car is in high gear and cruising at sixty,the engine might be delivering only twenty five horsepower or so, with the tach showing 25 percent of redline rpm.Throttle almost closed.
The combine engine will be running at its governed max of 2000 to 3500 rpm and when the combine is actually working-pulling its own ten thousand plus pounds over soft ground on high flotation high rolling resistance tires, driving the cutter head, driving the internal conveyers, driving the big fans that provide the air blast to seperate the grain and the chaff, and blow everything out the back or into the hopper or a truck driving alongside-well, that engine is necessarily providing two hundred and fifty or so horsepower-continiously-enough to drive a dozen compact light wieght cars down a paved highway.The last fifty horses are a reserve for extra tough going, such as maintaining speed on an upgrade.
There is simply no hope of running a combine or heavy tractor on batteries on a conventional farm with lots of acreage under cultivation at this time as all available batteries capable of driving such powerful motors for any length of time are simply too big, too heavy, and too expensive.
It's diesel,gasoline, ethanol, biodiesel, or compressed gas for the time being. Period.
Five or ten years from now?Maybe, but my money says biofuels and diesel engines will remain cheaper for the foreseeable future than batteries and electric motors capable of driving such power hungry equipment.
John Deere 9770 specifications. It's a medium-large combine by today's standards. 360 horsepower, with a 385 HP power boost for unloading on the go. Base weight, 32765 lb. Add 6700 lb for a 35 foot flex header and 18000 lb for a full hopper of wheat. About 57000 pounds when the full hopper horn blows. Front tires are 800/65R32, 6 feet tall, 32 inches wide.
http://www.deere.com/specsapp/CustomerSpecificationServlet?sbu=Ag&pciMod...
At least one of the potash mines here in Saskatchewan runs 14400 volts to the mine face, but the digger moves feet/hour, not miles per hour.
and while the mining EQ moves - the 15KV lines don't move THAT much.
VS a tractor being 'all over the place'. Wires + insulation that is moveable and won't break when moved is gonna be expensive.
I said we would be using diesel for the foreseeable future. CNG certainly works too, but the CNG will run out eventually as well.
Electric motors with the same power are substantially smaller than gas/diesel motors, so that makes up for some (a small amount) of the battery energy density issue. But again . . . why do people keep ignoring that I said you would have to swap the battery often? Yes . . . it is completely impractical to run a tractor for 12 hours on a battery! SO DON'T DO IT! Just run for an hour and then swap the battery. A battery to run for an hour is do-able. Is that as convenient as being able to run for 12 hours straight? Absolutely not. Is it more convenient than starving? I certainly think so.
The 90% efficiency was brought up pointing out that electric motors can run much longer on far less energy thus the energy density of diesel is not needed. The efficiency of the electricity source (coal plant) is a different discussion . . . this discussion was on whether you could run a combine with batteries . . . which you can. You could do it today if you really wanted to . . . but we don't do it today because it isn't economically sensible because we have cheap diesel. But when we no longer have cheap diesel, we don't have to go back to horses. As long as we have some decent energy source (nuclear, wind, solar, who knows?), we can continue doing mechanized agriculture. Yes, it will be more expensive than diesel.
. it is completely impractical to run a tractor for 12 hours on a battery! SO DON'T DO IT! Just run for an hour and then swap the battery. A battery to run for an hour is do-able.
Then show your math. Show the battery weight.
Feel free to use 'magic batteries' like EEStor.
thus the energy density of diesel is not needed.
Again, then show the math.
The combine described in the Original Post used about 73.5 gallons in a 12 hour day. That's about 300 kWhs (assuming 10% conversion efficiency*), or about 25 kW, or about 32HP on average. 300kWhs in a li-ion battery would weigh about 2.4 tons (at about .125kWh per kilo), so if a combine could carry a ton of batteries, it would have to stop to "refuel" every 5 hours.
So...how much weight could a combine carry?
*That's lower than the conventional number I used first, because this kind of application is going to be pretty inefficient for a diesel motor, whose peak power has to be much, much larger than the average power.
The combine described in the Original Post used about 73.5 gallons in a 12 hour day.
The John Deere turbo 8820 is listed as a 255 HP unit. Weight - Lbs. 23360.
or about 32HP on average
A Horsepower is a Horsepower - so in theory you don't NEED any conversion factors. Now, having said that:
Methinks your calcs are off somewhere.
20-40 HP tractors are 1950's and 1960's vintage Allis Chalmers.
http://www.barretomfg.com/ has these sweet rototillers - for when you want your ground tilled.
http://www.barretomfg.com/fullsize-tiller.php These are 16 HP units.
The mule pulled, gas powered thresher mentioned elsewhere in this thread uses a 25HP gas motor JUST for the one function (not moving it, storing the grain and then transferring it like the 8820)
Elsewhere on the internet:
Electric is 2 1/2 times gas .... Posts seem to indicate an electric motor will produce twice the HP of a gas engine .... I think you need an engine capable of producing aapproximately1.6 time the hp of an electric motor. .... In doing research for my own Solar Powered boat plans, I learned that the correct formula to convert gas HP to Electric HP is 2.73. In other words one (1) Elec hp = 2.73 Gas hp. Electric motors also have a more even or consistant torque level through out the entire RPM range.
But lets use your calcs.
2.4 tons of batteries will add to soil compaction and increase your deadpan.
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/components/3115s02...
And with 32 HP - you are needing to dissipate over 20,000 watts of heat.
So, how many lead-acid batteries would it take to run the 25 hp mule-drawn combine for six to eight hours? How many mules would it take to pull the combined weight of driver, forecart, motor, loaded combine and batteries? That would be a straightforward approach, using existing technology. Is it practical?
So, how many lead-acid batteries would it take to run the 25 hp mule-drawn combine for six to eight hours?
I'd rather see the "it can be done with batteries" people take the stab at it rather than my position of 'tether it'. I have no idea if 1 mule is == to 1 horsepower, but to say they are the same means 746W * 4 means 3 KW (rounding up) A 2KW hub motor is 'bout $2500 worth of LiPO for 1 hour.
5HP is within the ability of 20 amp 220 3 phase power - so "off the shelf" electrical wire....
You can select the big forklift batteries or a bunch of small ones so the 'how many' question can vary. Either way - gonna be heavy.
Eric,
The combine described here http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6871 used about 73.5 gallons in a 12 hour day. That's about 450 kWhs (assuming 15% conversion efficiency*), or about 37.5 kW (or about 50HP on average). 450kWhs in a li-ion battery would weigh about 4 tons (at about .125kWh per kilo). Now, the combine we're talking about can carry 60,000 lbs of wheat, or 30 tons. If we reduce his carrying capacity by 13% (inconvenient, but certainly doable) we can a days' worth of batteries.
*The conversions are very straightforward: diesel fuel contains about 40kWh, assuming 100% efficiency of burning. That means that our 73.5 gallons for the day can produce a maximum of about 3,000 kWhs. Now, even the most efficient marine diesels (2 stories high) only get to about 50% efficiency, and that's with a 2 story high 100,1000 HP engine running at the sweet spot of about 80% of rated capacity. A combine at it's peak is unlikely to do better than 33%, and running at 10-20% of rated capacity will likely only get maybe 15%. So, 15% of 3,000 kWhs is 450kWhs for the day.
The conversion between HP and kWh is .746kWh per HP: that's for average energy output, and isn't quite as useful for things like effective torque, or peak output requirements.
with 32 HP - you are needing to dissipate over 20,000 watts of heat.
That power gets applied to the working equipment - it's not dissipated inside the motor. Heat dissipation requirements will be the same for electric motors and diesel engines.
The combine described here http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6871 used about 73.5 gallons in a 12 hour day. That's about 450 kWhs (assuming 15% conversion efficiency*), or about 37.5 kW (or about 50HP on average). 450kWhs in a li-ion battery would weigh about 4 tons (at about .125kWh per kilo). Now, the combine we're talking about can carry 60,000 lbs of wheat, or 30 tons. If we reduce his carrying capacity by 13% (inconvenient, but certainly doable) we can a days' worth of batteries.
I saw your calculation. However that does not square with:
1 HP is 1 HP
1 HP is 746 watts
Observations by people that you can take a 3 HP electric motor and that will fit a 5 HP ICE with a ratio of 1.5 to 2.7 depending on who you ask. (just to screw with the 1 HP is 1 HP)
And the unit in question is a 255 HP combine.
Using your numbers should result in a machine that would not be able to perform as intended. I'll let other weigh in on if one should use the fuel consumption or the faceplate on the EQ as the basis of comparison. Not that it matters as the battery is cost prohibitive.
li-ion battery would weigh about 4 tons
And at the present cost of $100 a lbs for Li-ion that is one expensive battery. (you are pushing 1/2 a million for the battery) Even at $10 that is expensive for something that would drive a combine for a short time and needs replacing every few years.
Oh and as I like to harp on failure modes - I'm not sure many would be comfortable with a rapid discharge failure of a 2 or 4 ton Li-ion battery pack. It might be "fun" to watch - not "fun" if its your battery pack or you are the one next to it.
Heat dissipation requirements will be the same for electric motors and diesel engines.
Now that is WAY incorrect. A diesel has a temp of 320 C in the combustion chamber and an outside temp of (we'll say) 32C If you know of electric motors that are running at an internal temp of 320C - do post a link.
The higher temp of the diesel means a simpler time of getting rid of the heat.
Observations by people that you can take a 3 HP electric motor and that will fit a 5 HP ICE with a ratio of 1.5 to 2.7 depending on who you ask. (just to screw with the 1 HP is 1 HP)
Again, power is power. The conversion between HP and kWh is .746kWh per HP: that's for average energy output, and isn't quite as useful for things like effective torque, or peak output requirements. I suspect you're dealing with torque and peak power requirements. That's an engine/motor question, not a battery question.
at the present cost of $100 a lbs for Li-ion
That's not really a useful way to specify costs. Cost per kWh is better.
I'm not sure many would be comfortable with a rapid discharge failure of a 2 or 4 ton Li-ion battery pack.
Less dangerous than fossil fuels, which as everyone is noting, are more energy dense.
The higher temp of the diesel means a simpler time of getting rid of the heat.
You're talking about a heat engine. Literally, diesel engines convert heat into power, and produce enormous amounts of waste heat. Electric engines don't work that way.
at the present cost of $100 a lbs for Li-ion
That's not really a useful way to specify costs. Cost per kWh is better.
Then please price it from kWh.
Less dangerous than fossil fuels, which as everyone is noting, are more energy dense.
The impulse conversion rate of diesel is limited by how much oxygen you can get the diesel.
A battery pack can fail via a dead short or, for some chemistry types a puncture - in both cases the dense energy can be released in a FAR shorter period of time.
please price it from kWh.
Ok, let's try the calculations again.
Li-ion batteries cost about $350 per kWh these days, so a 450kWh pack will cost about $160k (that's the wholesale price these days, and will be the retail price in 5 years). Over 30 days per year, we'll use 73.5 x 30 = 2,205 gallons, and use 13,500 kWh. If we want a 10 year payback, then we need to save $16k per year. The power will cost about $1,000 (night time power is cheaper, so the average cost/kWh might be $.07), so we need to save $15k on fuel. $15k / 2,205 = $6.80. gallon.
So, when fuel prices rise above about $7/gallon (timing?), or batteries get cheaper than $450/kWh (probably about 5 years out) electric combines will become competitive.
A battery pack can fail via a dead short or, for some chemistry types a puncture - in both cases the dense energy can be released in a FAR shorter period of time.
Doesn't this seem a bit alarmist? Doesn't it seem like something the owner of a horse and buggy would have said about those dangerous horseless carriages?
To answer the question directly: the newest li-ion designs are mighty safe, and even the older designs never exploded.
Nick, 'your calculations of the power produced by the diesel engine are lowballing the efficiency, and thus the output you are trying to match.
One of the great things about diesels is that they have good efficiency even at part load.
You stated that the combine would be running at 10-20% of capacity, but why would you do that? That means your combine is 5-10x larger than it needs to be!
Combines, running at their optimum point, will be about 70% of capacity (t.hr) and 50% of engine capacity.
But we can avoid all this by going back to the fuel usage, and real world numbers from this site;
http://www.dieselserviceandsupply.com/Diesel_Fuel_Consumption.aspx
And for 6 gal/hr we get 75kW for the a generator output, which would be about 83kW or 111 hp.
So for 12 hrs, you need 996kWh of output from your batteries, or close enough to one MWh - that is some serious electricity!
using lead acid, at the rule of thumb of 1kWh=100kg (to 50% dod) you need 10 tons of them! And at $100per effective kWh, that is $100k
Now, you do get to displace 73 gal of diesel/day, and at say $5/gal, that is going to take you 270 days of harvesting to make up the difference, assuming the electricity is free.
You realise this is one hell of an investment in batteries and ancillary to displace fuel for a piece of equipment that runs for only a few days or weeks a year.
You could power a smaller machine, but that removes one advantage - a large machine gets it done quickly, before weather can intervene.
I agree with the author, I would save/make whatever diesel (or ethanol) i needed to run this beast.
I can;t see any point in an EREV configuration either. If you retain the engine and still need fuel, then just go with that and save/make fuel somewhere else
A small (,50hp) battery tractor would be quite useful for a utility tractor/front end loader etc, where it does brief periods of work, similar to an electric forklift, but for long haul stuff like this, I think you are creating a very complex solution to the problem.
if I absolutely had to go electric, I would go mining style, and do it with cable, not batteries. You woul need to have one cable (the A cable) on a reel and trailer, which starts from the SW(say) corner, and will run up the W side of the field. the combine has a B cable, connected to the A cable, and this is started laid out to halfway along the S edge of the field and back to the combine at the corner. The combine moves west to east along the south side, and drags the cable behind it, in the just harvested area. When it gets to the east side, the cable is now at full length, and the combine turns around and comes back, so the cable will be back to being halfway along the field. The A cable is then moved forward two combine widths, so it is behind the next run and you go again.
This is similar to how travelling irrigators the big gun type, not centre pivot, drag their supply hoses. You then pick up the whole thing , move it over to the next line, and go again.
this would be MUCH easier, and cheaper, than messing with batteries You just need to find an armoured cable to drag along, but those do exist.
http://www.generalcable.com/NR/rdonlyres/3F3084D7-6B80-4FA8-9E99-A832A93...
These are designed to be dragged behind mining equipment, so they can take some punishment, and being driven over etc.
For 100kW, and three phase, 480V, you would be looking at about 150amp/leg, so the #1 sized cable would do it. Not light at 3kg/m, but much lighter than any battery pack, and cheaper too.
I think this stuff would be easier to find than lithium batteries if we are in a post peak world - lots of surplus cable from closed mines!
You could power a tractor this way too.
Taking the wired concept a step further, you could set up the field in lanes, and run overhead wires for each pair, and use a trolley bus style pickup. Drive to the south side of the wires on the way out, U turn at the end, and come back on the north side, then switch over to the next set of overhead wires for the next lane.
Come to think of it, they wouldn't even have to be over head, they could just be at chest height, like a normal farm fence, with a side pick up from the tractor/combine - think a heavy duty, two cable electric fence, and you just energise each length as you go.
Building fences sounds much more up the alley of a farmer than messing with tons of Li-ion batteries!
Good info - I'll have take a few minutes to look at it.
One thought: I was really combining several forms of efficiency: engine thermal efficiency, drive train efficiency (including low utilization periods - see GE's latest diesel train EREV work) and system efficiency, including tire, suspension and other losses. I strongly suspect that farm equipment hasn't been optimized for fuel efficiency (note that the majority of the Prius efficiency gains come from outside the hybrid drive train).
Another good source for a real world estimate os from well known and published naval architect Dave Gerr. If you google Dave Gerr engine fuel consumption, it wil come up with the Google books link to his 2009 book "boat mechanical systems", and on p90, he has his formulas for fuel consumption. For diesel engines, gal/hr = 0.054xhp, so 1 gal/hr =18.5hp or 13.8kW, and for 6gal/hr = 84 kW, so pretty close.
A boat engine is a good comparison to a tractor because they tend to run at fairly constant speed for long periods, and often at or near the optimum fuel efficiency point.
I think you are partly right on the fuel efficiency optimisation. Most of it has come from the engine, but the transmission is a different beast. The most "efficient" is a simple gearbox and clutch, called "direct drive", but these can be beasts to drive, so many use hydrostatic transmission, torque converters etc, equivalent of a car automatic. Less efficient,but great for delivering tree stump pulling grunt, damping shock loads from plows to the driveline etc. A trade off of efficiency for utility. There is not much gain to be made with tires - by their nature, to get the big grip, you have rolling resistance, and ones that have lower resistance (deform less) have less grip! In the case of the combine, the power is need for the myriad mechanical functions of threshing grain.
I like the idea posted near the bottom of the thread of the Mcloud style harvester, harvest the grain, whole, and cart it off to a stionary thresher. That is how they did it in the 20;s with low powered steam tractors, and a stationary unit. Get the field units power low enough (50 hp or so) and your battery solution becomes workable, and you could use lead acid instead of Li-ion as the weight is then not much of an issue with 1/3 the size battery pack.
In the past, I have been of the opinion,as have some others here, that a diesel electric drivetrain for a boat or tractor or truck (of normal size, (200-400hp) would not be more efficient, but I may have to stand corrected, as major equipment maker has gone just this route!
Check out this new Caterpillar dozer, with diesel electric drive.
http://www.cat.com/D7E
This is not a prototype, though I;m sure they made some, but a full on production model you can buy today. the engine driveline could be put into a wheeled tractor without much difficulty. if you look at the diagram, it is impressive how small the motor is compared to the engine and generator that power it. I this case, it is really just a gearbox substitute, but they claim a 25% improvement in fuel per ton of earth moved. keep in mind this is for a machine that is designed to for forwards/backwards driving all day, and thus stop start. This way keeps the engine right in its sweet spot. The gain would not be so great for a well designed combine where the engine is already operating in its sweet spot all day.
But, it would be a good candidate for a battery, or wired conversion!
Paul: I'm not sure, but I think Le Tourneau had this going back in the forties and fifties with some of his iron.
GW, lots of bigger machines have diesel-electric, or diesel hydraulic, drive. Most of the giant dump trucks etc have that, as the mechanical gears get too big and heavy for the torques involved.
They are normally 500+hp for electric drive, there may have been others this small (170hp) in the past , but this is the only diesel electric (of any sort of mobile constr equipment) of this size that is on the market today.
If we start to see more of them then we know what the future will hold. And a diesel electric is an easy conversion to pure electric!
Well, thanks for the info!
I've combined my comments and your info into an article here: http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2010/08/will-farm-equipment-especially-lar...
Any comments would be very welcome!
Let's see, every couple of passes around the field we have to worry about whether the batteries are running low and whether we will get stuck. Either we have to drive to the battery storage facility or call in a swap. These heavy pieces of machinery go slow, so it will significantly increase harvest time to be driving back and forth from battery stations, or require a whole set of specialized, heavy equipment to deliver battery packs to the field.
Before proposing "solutions" I suggest folks head out to the country and watch combines work. Look at the landscape, meet the farmers perhaps, take a ride and break up the monotony of their day.
Before proposing "solutions" I suggest folks head out to the country and watch combines work.
You don't even need to go that far. Look at the horsepower being used and do calculations.
Well, it kinda depends on who is doing the watching and who does the calculations...
Jason,
First, it's very likely that an electric combine would be an Extended Range EV: it would have a small onboard generator, like the the Chevy Volt. Such a design would be 50-100% more efficient than a traditional diesel only combine, and would allow extended operation when desired, such as in a weather emergency.
As for battery capacity, let me try again:
The combine described here http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6871 used about 73.5 gallons in a 12 hour day. That's about 450 kWhs (assuming 15% conversion efficiency*), or about 37.5 kW (or about 50HP on average). 450kWhs in a li-ion battery would weigh about 4 tons (at about .125kWh per kilo). Now, the combine we're talking about can carry 60,000 lbs of wheat, or 30 tons. If we reduce it's carrying capacity by 13% (inconvenient, but certainly doable) we can a days' worth of batteries.
On the other hand, we could choose to swap batteries once during the day, and only carry 2 tons of batteries.
*The conversions are very straightforward: diesel fuel contains about 40kWh, assuming 100% efficiency of burning. That means that our 73.5 gallons for the day can produce a maximum of about 3,000 kWhs. Now, even the most efficient marine diesels (2 stories high) only get to about 50% efficiency, and that's with a 2 story high 100,1000 HP engine running at the sweet spot of about 80% of rated capacity. A combine at it's peak is unlikely to do better than 33%, and running at 10-20% of rated capacity will likely only get maybe 15%. So, 15% of 3,000 kWhs is 450kWhs for the day.
What part of "there is no need to provide power to have them run for 12 hours" did you not understand?
What part of "Do show the battery tech that can provide the same or better energy density that diesel does." became "there is no need to provide power to have them run for 12 hours"?
Batteries will NEVER have the same energy density of diesel . . but that doesn't matter.
Yes it does matter. The reasons for it mattering have been hashed out here on TOD over the years. If you have a different answer that you can show why, do feel free to quote the TOD posters of the past are wrong - I'm sure management would make such sef-referential meta research a front page post.
Yes it does matter. The reasons for it mattering have been hashed out here on TOD over the years.
Actually, it hasn't, surprisingly enough. The effectiveness of electrification has never really been looked at thoroughly. That's too bad, because it really does work.
Have you looked at a diesel submarine?
Actually, it hasn't, surprisingly enough.
Sure it has.
The storability of hydrocarbons VS the non storability of electricity.
The energy density of the hyrdocarbon VS batteries.
The effectiveness of electrification has never really been looked at thoroughly. That's too bad, because it really does work.
I'd say it has and the limiting factors became:
Batteries (both storage and portability)
Metal costs. Both conductors and the metal in the battery.
On the 2.4 ton of batteries example elsewhere in this topic - lets price a battery pack and use a 1000 lbs short ton.
http://www.forsenusa.com/batteries.html
$2450 27
$900 8 lbs $1200 11.1 lbs
$1000 9 lbs $1350 12.5 lbs
Lets make it easy. $100 a lbs.
2400*$100 = $240,000 for the battery pack.
1/2 a million for 2 swappable battery packs. And I think his battery need calcs are off by a factor of 4 to 5.
(Under conductors - look at the discussion between Alan and another about 600VDC VS 15KV lines WRT rail cars.)
Actually, it really hasn't. We can see that in other comments. Metal costs, for instance, as a very small % of battery costs. Lithium is abundant, and not the only chemistry.
Sure, batteries aren't perfect, but they're good enough. A Chevy Volt EREV reduces fuel consumption by 90% over a conventional US car - that's good enough.
Li-ion batteries cost about $350 per kWh these days (your source is about $1,300, but he's not dealing with large-format, high volume, purpose built industrial equipment), so a 450kWh pack will cost about $160k (that's the wholesale price these days, and will be the retail price in 5 years). On the other hand, we'll save about $200 in fuel per day - if we use the combine for 60 days per year, we save $12K per year, so that's about a 13 year payback. That's not great, but it's not bad.
If we use the combine for only 30 days, then we might get creative with strategies like cheaper shorter-lived chemistries or charging during the day, or accept slightly higher overall costs.
Actually, it really hasn't
Sure it has. Whole front page posts have covered the need to upgrade the grid if we are going to have an all-electric future.
As oldframermac mentioned - some places lack 3 phase power. So in this electric future - you need to get the power to the fields. Keep in mind the grid needs to be resized to place power to charge/run these monsters on each farm. The section of land I know of 'up north' that was used for potato farming only has 480V 3 phase on its boarders. I'm not seeing the math to power the diggers in the short time needed for harvest - flip side is that land is now fallow and for sale so I guess it doesn't matter if you can't electro-farm it.
, so a 450kWh pack will cost about $160k
Bout time a price gets mentioned VS the 'it only weights 4 tons let us not talk about price'.
about $200 in fuel per day - if we use the combine for 60 days per year, we save $12K per year,
And the cost of the electricity?
if we use the combine for 60 days per year,
I believe that is a VERY optimistic use schedule. The 30 is more like it - but lets have OFM or Jason weigh in. Considering harvests can start at 4 AM and run to 10 PM - that leaves little time to charge a battery pack. That means new gear AND the new battery packs to power it (and thus an even bigger grid)
Whole front page posts have covered the need to upgrade the grid if we are going to have an all-electric future.
They've begun to be addressed, but they haven't "been hashed out". Not at all.
some places lack 3 phase power.
The electric future doesn't have to be 100%. 95% is great. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
And the cost of the electricity?
73.5 gallons of diesel, at about $3 (which seems like a reasonable near-term prediction) is about $220. 450kWhs at about 7 cents per kWh (average of night and day rates) is about $30, so that's about $190 savings per day.
Considering harvests can start at 4 AM and run to 10 PM
Jason talked about 12 hours days. If we only have 8 hours, the kW is higher, but the price per kWh is lower.
The electric future doesn't have to be 100%. 95% is great.
*smile*
We may be at even 5%.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/boeingwhistleblowers.pdf
(man that link is some bad mojo)
Most rural power grids are old and close to their load limit now. Most farms around here have a 10 or 20 horsepower transformer. Yes, that's how they rate them. Now take a combine pulling 300 continuous hp for 12-16 hours. I don't know much about battery technology, but lets say the combine can pack enough battery for one hours running. Any battery I've seen can't be charged at it's discharge rate. So we have one battery on the combine, one in transit because it's 10 miles down to the old Jones place and two charging. Weather being weather and harvest being harvest, the first dry day in a week comes along and 30,000 farms in Saskatchewan are drawing 225 kilowatts each. We need trucks for hauling the grain from the combine to the bins. That means a full hopper in an hour in flax to I've heard 8 minutes in corn. Average it to 100 horsepower per hour for trucking and add it to the combine's 300 horse power. There isn't the generating capacity and power grid that can handle it.
Most rural power grids are old and close to their load limit now.
True. OTOH, their peak load is during the day, and battery charging would be mostly at night.
Most farms around here have a 10 or 20 horsepower transformer. Yes, that's how they rate them.
That sounds like 7.5kW or 15kW service, or 110V and 60A or 120A.
Anybody have any idea if that's right?
The farm that Jason is discussing would need about 450kWh per day. A 15kW service could provide 1/3 of that in 10 hours: that's not bad. An EREV combine could be 1/3 powered by the grid, 2/3 by fuel.
Any battery I've seen can't be charged at it's discharge rate.
The latest generation of li-ion batteries can do that just fine.
30,000 farms in Saskatchewan are drawing 225 kilowatts each....There isn't the generating capacity and power grid that can handle it.
On the one hand, Jason's (friend's) farm only need 45kW. OTOH, 30k farms sounds like most of the farms in Saskatchewan. Even 225kW x 30k farms is only 8GW. I think that Saskatchewan can find 8GW at night.
Most rural power grids are old and close to their load limit now.
True. OTOH, their peak load is during the day, and battery charging would be mostly at night.
As Nick is ignoring what OldJack is saying and you, the reader, may not have caught it I'll use an example:
Circuit - 1000 amps.
100 customers who draw 2 to 20 amps which varies over time.
Now you go to all electric farming.
What will be the draw in amps of the 100 customers? Does man have the raw materials to upgrade the customer circuits? The material to upgrade the circuits to get to the customers circuits?
Eric,
I didn't ignore it.
What do you mean by "Circuit - 1000 amps."?
Keep in mind, most of the draw will be at night.
What will be the draw in amps of the 100 customers?
Depends on the voltage - what are you assuming?
Does man have the raw materials to upgrade the customer circuits? The material to upgrade the circuits to get to the customers circuits?
Of course - if copper is a problem, we'd use aluminum, as is done now for pretty much all long-distance transmission.
Yair...this production system can be scaled up (or down) and can run from the mains or P.V.panels...http://maddelinternational.com/wordpress/?page_id=19
You could screw field crops all together and plant fruit and nut trees.
I think this is a good point -- before the age of the combine, I suspect that people ate far fewer grain products than they do today. As a gardener/farmer who is currently engaged in producing about half of the food we consume as a family, I can say that grain -- grown without the use of a combine -- would be so much work as to be hardly worth the effort. Potatoes or corn (yes - I know -- it's also a grain, but MUCH easier to harvest) would provide the same carbs with a fraction of the effort.
Fruit trees are great, but the product is not nearly as long lived as grains. Nuts can last a while, but they're also very labor intensive to harvest and crack.
On the subject of burning straw -
http://www.stirling-tech.com/stirling/stirling.htm
(they were made at one time I do not believe you can buy one now)
Recently in the news...
Suddenly I'm not all that optimistic about the future... living a life akin to Little House on the Prairie might actually be a lot better than what may be coming down the pipeline.
wow...scary stuff. It takes a lot of psychological strength, for those who are aware of things to come, to hang on and face the storm.
One of the advantages of schizophrenia is the disconnect between reality and the emotional response to that reality.
I pity you Nermals.
That's what we have drugs for. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5555#comment-517515
good idea...if there's nothing you can do, might as well be numb.
There has been a discussion going on at George Mobus' Campfire.... http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6877 ....about whether future farmers will return to draft animals or find ways to keep mechanisation in the mix. For those of us who actually realize the extreme high value of a combine or tractor there is no question that farmers will find ways to keep these tools working the fields. Prioritization of fuel sources combined with alternatives and modified farming methods will be our future in Ag.
Greer's latest "Two agricultures, not one" http://www.energybulletin.net/53867 seems to apply here. Baring some major black swan or collapse, more folks will be growing their own gardens locally while extensive agriculture will continue due to it's high EROEI, even using biofuels.
I vote everyone gets a bicycle and defers their "liquid fuel allowance" for agriculture...
at least for the foreseeable future
we can hope.....
what is our allowance? a trillion or so barrels left, 10 billion (easy math) folks on the planet....100 barrels for each of us for our use and that of all of our descendents....and that 100 barrels includes the stuff we don't see at the pump. Asphalt, military use, police and fire. yikes
foreseeable future is the key term
presently "the allowence" is 4 barrels per capita per yr...
about 10th is used on agriculture.. so 0.4 barrels per yr X 80 40 barrels per capita per lifetime
gives us about 2-3 generations to sort this out call it a 100 yrs.. but then again LNG and all that unconventional low eroei crap thrown in
specialized haulage, ambulance, roads etc is not the bulk so if rationed its doable..
So its rationing until? .... well the end if time. which is what sustainability is really all about.
The end
off topic here-
I am intrigued with the possibility of using several of the latest lithium ion batteries that come wiyh portable power tools rigged in parallel to power an electric bicycle.
I have a shop and can rig a battery powered motor to the chain drive of a conventional bike very easily while still preserving the pedals and conventional brakes.
Hass anybody here tried to use such batteries as a bike power pack?
They can do double duty for somebody like me, they are locally sold and warranted, and they seem to last a long time.
I don't have much faith in cheap stuff from China- Chinese goods reliability and parts availability suck! Unless of course the goods happen to be wearing a well known American or japanese brand name! Then Chinese stuff seems to be ok.
Hass anybody here tried to use such batteries as a bike power pack?
Instead of motor->chain I've went with hub motors. And yes, they do work. A motor in the front means you are being pulled into your skid, vs being pushed from behind with a 'stokemonkey' design.
A 400 watt hub is like having a tour de france rider strapped to the bike. Cept its a fat TdF rider who's asthmatic. On a cast iron bike with wide tires that are a smidge under inflated.
A 2000 watt hub is a 40 MPH suicide run on a closed track because no one would violate the 744 watt/20 mph limits of the law....now would they?
American labeled made by toshiba (I want to say toshiba) hub motors http://www.rabbittool.com/
The thing is, I already have the motor and four batteries-the motor is a variable speed batterypowered drill motor, probably about a hubdred fifty watts-enough to help out a lot, and travel right along on level ground at ten to fifteen mph-I think.
The question is how far I could expect to go on my four batteries.I like to tinker.
The Controller and the Charger(s) are going to be key, of course.
I've been looking at this one, albeit it's Chinese, it is ponderable..
http://www.goldenmotor.com/ (click on 'Magic Controller')
You have the 18v Lithiums? How many W/hrs? How much do you weigh? .. and how much are you willing to pedal?
I say do it and find out. Calcs are an academic exercise.. build a prototype and take some Boots-on-ground feedback!
Bob
(You seen all the Web Videos for this combo? .. it does work, but you might want a slightly beefier motor.)
I have a bikee mountain bike recumbent c 2000 that I bought and then found I could not get up hills without blowing out my knees. At the time it was really hard to find any electric motors but I found a guy on the internet who was willing to try. We bought a Currie Bike from China and took off the motor and attached it to the rear wheel. We used a SLA battery and I could just get to town (back is downhill) which is under 6 miles. I then moved to NiMH batteries via Rabbit tools. Took me awhile to get those batteries because I was in line after a submarine.
Now I have lithium ion phosphate from Mr. Li Ping in the PRC. He is quite famous on the Voltage Forum where you should go to find out more on this subject. (V is for Voltage, I think.) The way to go now is with the internal hub motor on the rear wheel. There are kits now, I think, with much better systems and WAY better controllers. The guy who did my original bike and I are trying to build an electric car that I can pedal but it is not going well - partly batteries, partly design issues. Electric bikes are great though. Someone should do a campfire on them because there are lots of people working on various versions.
I know this is off-topic but I eventually found The Oil Drum as part of my mad search for batteries and motors. I started with Fraser's Energy Blog that sadly faded away. I am very pessimistic about the future for electric bikes and batteries because I don't see that the batteries will be made in the US and they will be hard to source. As far as I can tell all the motors, batteries controllers etc. are mostly made abroad. I had high hopes for the Firefly battery because it had a lead carbon technology and would have been lighter than the SLA but they folded after failing to get stimulus money.
I would like to hear what others think about the future for battery technology and bikes. When we get old enough or crazy enough to lose our automobile licenses some of us are still going to be able to wheel around, I hope.
I agree about the campfire idea.
What are the key holdups with the Pedal/Car? I suppose keeping the weight down is more than tough to do. Still going with LiPo? or LiFePo? Would love to know more..
my thoughts gravitate towards something of a Tadpole-Velo with Handle AND Pedal Power, plus a 'small' electric supplement.. and a pair of sort of 'Rickshaw' Trailers that would carry one add'l person each, also with Pedals/Handles, so you could extend a 'train' when two or three were travelling.. or use one for carrying things. This would be for Local Use, I expect, and the construction at this point would reflect the Lightweight Construction of Baidarkas or Inuit Kayaks, Fabric over light woods/Carbon-Fiber. (But Steel,etc for the Under-Carriage HDW) A variation would have a longish cargo trailer be where the electrics lived, so you have a powered ride when you're hauling stuff.
Bob
What are the key holdups with the Pedal/Car?
Social. No one wants to be rained on. Or cold. Or hot. And if you have a few extra lbs of cargo - the car is more 'convenient'.
Are you ever NOT Snyde, Eric? It gets old. Try talking WITH people a little more, and drop a few of the Haughty Debunkings from time to time.
First off, I was asking HIM about the progress of the pedal car he has been working on, mentioned in the prior post.
Beyond that, covered ('faired') velos and other such cycles are made for both Aerodynamics, but also to be able to get through more types of weather. No need to get rained on.
Hot and Cold. Like Skiers and Desert Marathon runners.. there are ways to deal with them. Staying Warm might be the least of your troubles in one of these.
On Three or more wheels, dealing with Snow and Ice has more possibilities. Of course the car is more 'convenient' .. but it's a dead end, right? I'm not asking why the 'masses' have a problem with these.. that much we all know around here, I'm sure. (While some may know the point, but just disagree with it)
was asking HIM about the progress of the pedal car he has been working on
I see. So the 'social' roadblock on a personal project was asked why?
Because going on line with a basic knowledge of 4 wheel pedal cars shows
http://www.adbikes-usa.com/ (novelty to sell)
http://electricbikecar.com/default.aspx (already electric)
http://www.lightfootcycles.com/quads.php
http://www.rhoadesinfo.com/rcar/index.shtml (if you remember them and look for lists you'll find others)
None of 'em are big into protection for heat/cold/rain/the feared other drivers on the road - thus if one is asking 'why arn't these popular' the "social" answer becomes apparent.
Eric;
Good grief. Are you that hard up for stuff to debunk? This is like that 'All AG is technically Solar' comment. You're side-skipping to loosely connected issues, as if all you want to do is eek out 'Yah But's' and prove how everything is impossible... I didn't ask whether he (she?) has 100,000 presales yet, or has won the admiration of Click and Clack.. just 'What are the problems with your project?'
Here's what Fannybuckingham said..
"The guy who did my original bike and I are trying to build an electric car that I can pedal but it is not going well - partly batteries, partly design issues."
People are coming up with all sorts of workable homebuilts, from Tadpoles to Twikes to those monstrous 'Bike/Bus' contraptions. Somewhere in there will be some blends that get the weight advantages of a bike, some of the weatherproofing and enclosures of a car, etc. But it's a balancing act, and an evolving idea.
Why do you feel the need to say 'Look, there are problems with them, and noone from the GOP is lining up for them yet?'
Duh!
No it it isn't! It is a really stupid option! We need to ostracize those who don't agree!
"No one wants to be rained on. Or cold. Or hot." Well, Boo! Hoo! Hoo! Color me unimpressed...
Here is a real and viable option available today.
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/sanjuans/isj/business/89546537.html
I would think that the motor, if is from a cordless drill, would burn out quickly as they are not made for continuous use or the type of load a bike generates. If you replace the motor with a starter or something really big, then it will really suck up the power and reduce the range. I would go the the junkyard and get the motor and some parts from an electric wheelchair. As for the controller, a simple on/off momentary switch works fine. I would think that 5 miles would be about right for range if everything runs smoothly and the road is smooth and flat. These are all guesses as I don't know any details about your parts,but I tinker with these things so it probably is in the ballpark.
Drill motors will burn out fast if you load them heavily so the rpm falls off due to loss of cooling from the little built in fan;but if you keep them wound up they will run for a long time with no problems.
But somebody ;) mentioned a wheel chair motor-and I know where I can get an electric wheel chair for free that almost certainly has a good motor.
OFM, this seems to be a good setup that you may be able to emulate:
http://www.cyclone-usa.com
I did the math at one point and w/o LiPO batteries it didn't seem worth it to me (I was living in hilly area at the time and the LiPO shot the price right up). But of course for tinkering almost any price can be justified by someone in the tinkering mood :-).
You would probably need a setup that would use some combination of 6 batteries (2 18v in series to get 36V and three sets of those in parallel for the extra power). These batteries seem to sell for 30 to 50 dollars apiece and are only 1.7 AH vs the 12 AH a small lead acid battery can deliver. 10 Ah seems to to be at the very low end for EV bike batteries.
I used to use a ni-cad set up much like what you are talking about that worked well for a 24 volt 250w hub motor. It had about a 6-10 mile range (depending on usage type) and the "hot" charge (full 24 volts) lasted for the first 2 miles. I think my maximum speed was 15 Mph.
The set-up I am using now is lead-acid at 48 v and 48 Ah. it's heavy (about 40 lbs or 4 times as heavy as Li) but it has plenty of range and power and is cheaper then ni-cad and Li and easy to recycle.
I recommend powered hubs instead of a chain drive, they are cheap and efficient and brush-less. They do need controllers though. They can also be mounted on the front which balances the weight of batteries in the back. You need strong forks though.
I am planning on building a gasoline-electric bike without batteries. If it is good for trains, why not bikes? Don't bother to answer that :-). Electric does good at low rpm's unlike IC engines so it might be useful for making a peppy bike using a small gas engine. No clutch or drive-train would be needed. This is just a bit of tinkering and I doubt it will work well, but I might learn something.
Just had a thought bubble. What is the fesibility of building a small ELV in ground rail system tosupply electric bicycles with say 24VDC at strategic locations i.e up hills, dedicated commuter bike trails. Could negate the battery problem, which lightens the bicycle overall. Might need some thinking about brushes and electrical return path etc but would certainly be lower tech than snazzy new Li-ion batteries. Maybe a big super cap could suck upcharge as you went along such a path to boost you along those places just too hard to ride. Just a thought.
I have played (just playing, ya hear?), with the notion of having a sort of 'Rope Tow' for cyclists, so the folks going downhill can help pull up the people coming uphill.
Like tipping waiters when in a big group, everyone will probably feel like they're providing the Loin's share. (Intended typo)
Hmm...I doubt you'd have any takers on the down slope part but it would be an interesting social experiment.
Here is a home made rope tow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K32OyNa5ByA
And here is one more professionally made:
Bicycle Lift in Trondheim, Norway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j1PgmMbug8
Will our next set of tycoons come from building out post-peak infrastructure like bike tows? Fun idea to think about.
Not personally on a bike but it would probably work just fine. I have used Lithium ion Phosphate batteries for small solar lighting projects.
This bike does use them.
http://www.gizmag.com/green-wheel-electric-bicycle/11076/
Hmm, it just occurred to me that one might be able to build a three wheel drive recumbent with three of these green wheels and enclose it in aerodynamic shell. Sort of like this:
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/sanjuans/isj/business/89546537.html
It would be a simple matter to build a solar powered charger for it.
Battery in the hub? So I need to use energy to move the battery and I get no gain? Spinning batteries are more efficient? This is a typical clean solution (from an installers view) that is incredibly wasteful. How many horsepower does your car waste spinning the engine or the gas tank? From a racers (or riders) viewpoint, unsprung weight is dangerous, the more weight in the wheels, the more you can lose control (centrifugal force fighting you and inertia). The weight (as much as possible) should be applied after some suspension, like a frame with suspension and then mount your power supply and engine as low as possible.
Wow! Sharkman, the guys who developed this hub are from MIT, my hunch is they have put a little more thought into this than you seem willing to do. "How many horsepower does your car waste spinning the engine or the gas tank?" Are you serious?! Do you even have a clue as to the efficiency of an ICE engine compared to a BLDC?
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_web_projects/z.yates/zach%27s%...
Emphasis mine. As for spinning the gas tank, well I'll pass on that one!
While this description is of a similar and not the exact one from the link it still gives a good idea as to how the motor works and how the weight of the batteries is distributed.
BLDC bicycle hub motors motors achieve a direct conversion of electric to mechanical energy on the order of 75%. The PDF linked below does a really good job of analyzing many different inputs and outputs of energy including caloric input of food for the rider.
http://www.ebikes.ca/sustainability/Ebike_Energy.pdf
Good general primer on hub motors can be found here:
http://www.ebikes.ca/hubmotors.shtml
Sharkman, please educate yourself before you talk about comparisons of hub motors to spinning gas tanks, that's not even wrong.
I own several of these motors so I do know a bit about them. I was questioning the point of making an all in one solution by combining battery and motor and controller all in one. Is it more efficient then an ICE? Doh! Did I mention comparing the efficiency of an electric motor to an ICE anywhere in my post? No. This makes for an easy installation and a "clean" look, but it is less efficient as you add to the weight of the moving parts and unsprung weight (do I need a degree from MIT to say that is a stupid idea?). I like e-bikes and have built several and I want the idea to become more popular. I don't want to see more over-priced high-tech crap being sold to people. There is "leading edge" and "bleeding edge" tech. People who accidentally buy "bleeding edge" tech usually soon lose interest in the tech because of the low return on their large investment. What about "KISS" Does the all in one solution consider that? If any component of my e-bike fails I can replace it. I don't have to replace the whole thing. How many e-bikes have you built and ridden? My bike of choice now is a 48v 48AH 2000w duel powered hub monster that does about 40 mph.
OK, My apologies, it seems I may have jumped the gun on you.
I live in south Florida and it is as flat as a pancake so even though I'm 57 I have not yet felt a need to electrify my old 12 speed street bike. I might get another bike to just to play with.
Right now I'm more interested in adding solar panels to a few golf carts but e-bikes are certainly something I'll be looking into as well.
Thanks FMagyar, I have always enjoyed your posts and was surprised by the last one. If you want any advice on E-bikes I will be glad to help (or add to the confusion). I know some cheap solutions that are less then optimal but get the job done.
edit- At 57 you need the workout from bike riding anyways, I'm 47 and my e-bikes (and gas bikes) have removed much of my workout. Now I have to dedicate time for exercise.
Thanks, I'll certainly keep the offer of advice or even confusion in mind!
So I need to use energy to move the battery and I get no gain?
No matter what motor+battery system you use, that is going to happen.
Move it forward or move it forward and around and around? Which uses less energy? That is what my "spinning gas tanks" was about. It is a pointless waste of energy.
Which uses less energy?
Depends - what is the path of the wheel-gyroscope? Is the wheel balanced? I'm guessing for some conditions the energy use would be the same.
48 volts of Lithium on my bike ...http://www.evalbum.com/1025
the latest applied research ... http://endless-sphere.com/forums/
my bike .... http://www.evalbum.com/1025
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMH_bk1Wdd0
Yeah, I like it !
This is what happened in Cuba during the "special period". Grains and cash crops like tobacco and sugar continued to use machinery and artificial fertiliser, but tubers, vegetables and fruits were grown largely by manual labour and organically.
It's only logical. When a resource is scarce, you use it where you'll get the biggest bang for your buck.
Well now, I'm sure our old friend "x" would love to tell you, "See! I frackin bloody told you EROEI was a just bunch o'bollocks..."
>;^)
It certainly is. Those who believe in EROEI/Net Energy are delusional.
Energy is an abstraction like grain and metal. Energy can not be treated as concrete. The form energy is in is more important than the BTU content.
All BTUs of energy are not the same. Some are renewable. A loss of BTUs in converting one form of energy to another can be and sometimes is offset by an increase in utility as in the case of electricity from coal or natural gas. The same thing is true in converting corn and natural gas into ethanol.
Treating an abstraction like energy as concrete is the fallacy called reification. Just because the government, prominent universities and most posters at TOD do it does not make it valid.
Energy return on energy invested is as stupid as grain return on grain invested or metal return on metal invested.
Total nonsense.
Thanks x, I had a feeling you would bite.
First, I don't think anyone believes in EROEI. It is just a useful concept.
Second, neither grain, metal nor energy are abstractions, at least not to most card carrying members of the reality based community.
Third, The form energy is in is more important than the BTU content. Here I think we are in agreement.
However since you still need to convert energy from one form to another to be able to extract useful work, losses throughout the conversion processes are quite important. See: Laws of Thermodynamics.
Fourth, "Treating an abstraction like energy as concrete is the fallacy called reification."
Sorry, I'm unable to wrap my head around energy being an abstraction. Perhaps that has something to with my having taken physics as part of my university education, so perhaps I'm somewhat biased.
I assume by concrete you mean "real"? If not I truly don't get it. As for reification, which of these definitions are you using?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=define%3A+reification&aq=...
Because quite frankly I don't think any of them can be applied in reference to energy being an abstraction since energy, very simply put, *IS NOT!!* an abstraction, again it may be my college physics bias showing through. Though I may have been dozing in my philosophy course the day we discussed the abstractness of the laws of thermodynamics.
Fifth, "Energy return on energy invested is as stupid as grain return on grain invested or metal return on metal invested.
Total nonsense."
I guess we'll just have to chalk it up to semantics, a different culture or even the fact that we are speaking completely different languages.
Hi Fred,
It's been a while since I read EO Wilson's "Consilience".
In this book he writes of the fur and sparks that fly as people (researchers and practicioners) from entirely different schools of thought, theory, and practice find thier work converging on subject matter of interest to both schools of knowledge, or philosophy, or whatever.
Each profession when this happens tends to see the followers of the other professsion as quacks.
I am sure that you will enjoy it.
X is trained as a business man.Physics is evidently as foriegn and incomprehensible to him as some newly discovered ancient alphabet would be to you or me.
His arguments are internally consistent and quite well thought out, so far as I can tell, within the framework of assumptions and definitions that comprise his world view.
But they are akin to the arguments that a modern day economist would make if he possessed only a fourteenth century education in respect to the physical sciences.
You will never be able to change his mind, or get him to consider the possibility that he is in error, because he has the sort of faith possessed by philosophers, historians, and cultural leaders.
Empirical science/business/engineering is denominated in dollars in his world rather than joules.It works for him as a practical matter. ;)
Great book, its been a while since I've read it myself. I have it on my bookshelf, I have to fly to Europe next week and it might be the perfect traveling book.
Yes, I agree with what you say and I'm not even trying to change X's mind or convince him that he is wrong, I'd just like to have him understand that we are not even close to being on the same page with regards the way we use certain words and what they mean. We might as well be talking Chinese and Martian.
If I say: "that box on the table is black" and someone argues that the table, the box and the color black are all abstractions and that their dimensions, relative positions, their mass and the fact that the pigment on the box is absorbing all of the visible wavelengths, is all just a meaningless reification, it does then become a bit difficult to communicate.
If I could make an observation...no scratch that, ask a question
what things would you list as not being an abstraction?
I'd just ask this:
By what possible definition is energy an abstraction?
Of course there is this:
http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/energy-as-an-abstract-concept...
As I mentioned before I slept through a lot of my philosophy course...
Emphasis mine, I consider that point to be highly refined yak dung! No, let me be more blunt, bullshit!
X,
I follow some of your logic, but not your 'Total nonsense' conclusion. My view is that EROEI is often misused in such a way as to make it meaningless. In some cases however it can be a very useful measure. Grain return (harvested) on grain invested (planted) is patently a useful measure. With regard to energy, the form of energy can be taken into account to give the EROEI measure some meaning for a particular application.
x-
I completely lost by some of your logic.
If energy cannot be treated as concrete does the logic mean the same for grain and metal aren't 'concrete'! Do you mean tangible and intangible? But it still doesn't make sense to me.
Agreed, forms of energy are important but energy work can be measured, hence joules. Sure, it gets more difficult when fuel substitution is not clarified, i.e., trying to lump in all types of energy as interchangeable.
Reification (fallacy), fallacy of treating an abstraction as if it were a real thing.
In physics, energy (from the Greek ἐνέργεια - energeia, "activity, operation", from ἐνεργός - energos, "active, working"[1]) is a quantity that is often understood as the ability to perform work.
EROEI - clearly it can be measured when converted to joules. Is the conversion of value? Now value or utility is an abstraction.
EROEI is a tool to describe a relationship. It is not a law or beleif and as you say, utility will determine wether a low EROEI activity is economic to do. It is useful as tool to describe the situation of where the out put is connected to the input of any given process and when the net yield for doing other work is zero, you have to find another process. There is no difference between an energy reurn on invstment to a dollar return on investment. It gives you one measure, but not the whole story of an investment.
Absolutely! It's the "Victory Garden" approach. A small, closely tended garden can provide essential nutrients while avoiding the high-cost of high-effort items at the store.
Given the interesting potash market, and eventual declines of nat gas in coming decades, I'm not sure yields will be as high, but mechanized grains seems like a strong societal investment.
Using the stalks for power may not pay, though, if that further depletes the soil of necessary nutrients. Somewhere in here recycling of human waste needs to factor in as well.
The combines cause soil compaction which erodes yields further. It seems like this is overcome with industrial fertilizer. Would organic fertilizer/pesticide penetrate the soil as well and keep plants from being devoured? Can it be made in sufficient quantities to overcome soil compaction?
Also, as oil supplies continue to decrease, the cost with distributing the oil should increase. Have any combines been manufactured that run on ethanol?
Wouldn't it be cheaper, if there was a large pool of unemployed, to replace the combine with farm animals and human labor? Can the unemployed afford to pay enough to allow farmers to purchase combines?
Would the price of combines increase substantially with the expected rise in coal prices as some substitution occurs? The production of combines is complex and energy intensive.
Around here at least the harvest season is dry and so are the fields so compaction is not much of an issue. However, your point is a valid one--we should be concerned about soil compaction.
With respect to industrial fertilizer, it adds to compaction problems because it is generally applied in excess of plant uptake and leads to loss of soil organic matter as carbon in soil is "burned" by metabolism given the surplus of other nutrients applied. So, the best way to prevent compaction is to farm in a way that builds and maintains high soil organic matter. Organic matter acts like a sponge not just for water and nutrients, but it also decreases the soil bulk density (i.e., less compact) and makes soil more resilient when heavy equipment passes over.
New combines on the scale pictured in this post are about $250,000-$350,000. If you had 100 people working for you and only paid them $10 per hour, each 12 hour work day during harvest season you'd be paying $12,000 in labor costs. In about a month you would have spent more than the cost of a brand new combine.
Combines are complex machines. The number of moving parts needing maintenance and replacement is high. But farmers have the off harvest season to get them in shape for the few months they go to work. If farms service their own equipment they need shops and an assortment of tools. One problem with changing technologies is the need to change over the tool sets to fix them and the knowledge as well (see my comment re. new combines, which run on hydrolics). This is why time is so precious, nothing is as simple as it seems on the surface.
Oat-powered combine harvesters used to be made, and could be made again without high-tech machinery.
What's more, these machines were built so they could be repaired on the farm, by the farmer, using simple hand tools. Many parts could be rebuilt by hand using woodworking tools for the wooden parts or a simple forge (which the farm would already have for the equivalent of repairing tires) for metal parts.
Not all parts of horse-drawn implements are simple or easily repairable on the farm. While I haven't worked with horse-drawn combines, other implements such as binders, mower, etc. are powered by the "bull wheel", a very heavy, wide steel wheel with prominent lugs for traction. The reason for five horses is not just to move the combine, but because the bull wheel is connected to a step-up gear box that converts its slow rotation to the high speeds needed to drive other parts of the machine. These would include shafts to the pitman to drive the sickle, shafts and belts to the beater bars, and shafts and belts to the cylinder, shakers and other moving parts involved with moving the straw into the combine, shattering the seed heads, and separating the seed and straw. This involves a lot of cast gear boxes, bearings, shafts, pulleys, belts, grease fittings, etc.
Besides self-propelled combines, there were also tractor-pulled combines which could either be powered by the tractor's power take off shaft or by a small engine mounted on the combine. The latter would be more practical as a "hybrid" solution with horses providing traction, but not threshing power. You could use fewer horses and not get stuck or have the operation interrupted by the bull wheel sliding on wet ground.
I use a pull behind PTO driven combine from 1964, recently refurbished, and I have another one on order. I believe the last of these types were made in the 60's in North America. If you see one for sale, i recommend you buy it, fix it, and put it in storage, it could be worth its weight in gold for you and certainly for your children. We have been trying very hard to think through what might be either sustainable or at least transitional across a broad swath of "collapse" scenarios, and the PTO is definitely one of them, in parallel to that is the atv/gator/4wheeler. So we buy simple tools and modify them to work on these platforms. Obviously one assumption is diesel fuel, but someday i may have the time to push us to a soybean press and do SVO.
The small combine harvesters like the Allis-Chalmers All-Crop are great machines, but there are a limited number of them running or restorable today and they're 45 to 65 years old. In the not-too-distant future we're going to need affordable new machines in this size range to replace them.
Right now most small combines are built for research use and are hideously expensive for their size. As far as I can tell, only the Italians are still building small-scale motorized machines for commercial farming use, and most of them are sold to customers in Africa and the Middle East. Does anyone know of any other sources?
These were stored in barns in Pennsylvania and Ohio, while replacing the belts was required and some lubrication, given the small/medium scale use (100 acres), I don't see why they won't be around for 100 years. Additionally they certainly appear to be something that i could repair from a junkyard, except for the wood pieces. that would have to be done by my carpenter uncle.
This is the first critical implement i've acquired that let's me believe there is a good life after peak oil. This is definitely an implement that could be fabricated given a working copy by local craftspeople, but I live amongst the Amish so it is little different then what might be around the Central Valley of California.
Belts for these machines are a big deal. They are expensive and can be hard to obtain. For example, the AC All-Crop's thresher belt is about 8 feet across and will cost you more than the combine did. These belts are also petroleum based. While they do last a long time (50 years or so), you better get some spares and keep them on hand. While the older machines are nice to have around they did require several people to operate. One to drive the tractor and two to keep an eye on it and stop the driver whenever it threw the thresher belt 30 feet up into the air! I spent a week helping an uncle combine 20 acres of oats with an AC Model 66 and that was an experience. Makes you really appreciate the new JD self-propelled models with a cab and air-conditioning!
Only because there is no market for these belts. If everyone needed them they would be much cheaper. Oil based, but not that much, natural rubber and fiber can make the same belt and that is organic.
"They [combines] are in no small measure responsible for a 600 fold increase in grain harvesting productivity." A Century of Innovation: Twenty Engineering Achievements that Transformed our Lives, p76
Perhaps we should have people walking or bicycling instead of driving and let the machines do the backbreaking work.
Anybody traveling on I81 in Va should take the time to stop at the Raphine exit and visit the McCormick farm homeplese where th forst practical harverster was built by hand in the blacksmith shop.
This very modest,low key historical site simply has to be one of the most important and yet least known sites where giant technological steps have been taken.
It's been a long time since I visited it, but iirc, it is less than ten minutes from the exit.
Ps The truck stop at the exit has generally had some interesting free displays of antique motorcycles,and old firearms-including a legally owned Thompson submachine gun;it's worth taking a quick snack and bath room break there to see this stuff;but the food is only run of the mill truck stop quality.
Exit 205 on I-81. I drove past it for two years before I quit working for the government and starting farming full time. The McCormick museum is well worth seeing if you are interested in historical farming technology and methods, and yes, the truck stops suck. I stopped there many times for lunch and to see the equipment and shops.
I think you would be hard pressed to find people today who are physically fit enough to do pre-1860 grain harvesting with a grain cradle. One man could do an acre in a day with his children helping to bind the wheat and that one man did not spend 20 years of his life sitting behind a desk! The reaper was a big improvement and the grain binder reduced the need for someone to bind the sheaves as the reaper cut them. The thresher further took out most of the hand labor of threshing and winnowing grain. The combine of course brought it all together and they are wonderful machines. If your going to grow and eat your own grain, you need a small combine to do it, other wise you are better off with corn and squash or potatoes.
As a farmer who is now using draft horses, I have a strong appreciation of combines (I don't currently produce any grain other than corn for our own use).
Just thought I'd note that the lack of a combine doesn't necessarily relegate people to using a scythe and tying shocks by hand.
Horse drawn grain binders are still used quite often by the Amish in the midwest where I live. The shocks of grain are then run through an old fashioned staionary thresher. Still a lot more work than a combine, but much less than a scythe or grain cradle.
I would assume a stationary thresher could be run on wind power...either stored batt power or geared much like the old style flour grinders, etc.
I think that's absolutely true. Just about any alternative power source could conceivably work. Now the question would be whether threshers could still be built and maintained in a society where energy constraints have broken many of the complex systems such as manufacturing and parts supply chains.
I would opt for an old all fuel John Deere A or B to run that stationary threshing machine. You can run them on ethanol, kerosene, gasoline or bio-diesel. On a hot day they would probably run on waste veggie oil if you had a quart of gas to get it started and hot. They are also set up with a pulley wheel to attach the belt on to it. All those other options sound nice, but it takes some torque to get a threshing machine running and keep it running. Steam and gas engines were made to run those machines. Finally, threshing machines can be run with a horse (4 horses) powered planetary gear that converts circular walking into rotational energy to run a pulley belt. Saw it demonstrated this past July at the Denton Farm Park in Denton, N.C.
astro: Now those, my friend, were a hell of a tractor!! No doubt about it!
Please spare a thought for the Lanz Bulldog.
From wiki here
NICE!!
davidveale: What kind of oat-burners do you have? Belgians? Morgans?
Currently working a team of Belgians, though we also recently purchased a standardbred for road transport. Belgians are great for strength at low speed, not so good for speed & distance. We're able to provide most of our own feed using hay and pasture, though they do occasionally get some oats when they're working hard.
Could you give us some figures on how much feed is needed per horse per year. Also could you give some figures on how much work you get from each horse over the course of a year. I have seen claims all over the map about the fuel efficiency of draft animals as well as human labor. It has been my contention that even low efficiency steam engines would use less biomass over the course of a year than draft animals do.
For the amount of work we do, I could get by on grass/hay exclusively, though I do feed out about 50lbs of oats a year (split between two horses). Keep in mind that I'm not farming full time, so the horses are working on weekends only, typically march through november. Each horse will go through about 150 bales of hay through the winter, but is exclusively on pasture in the summer. 1 50lb bale of hay per horse per day is the rule of thumb, if you were to feed hay exclusively, which I'm not sure you could if you were working the horses hard. Ours have had no problem working on a diet of almost all grass, however (grass is much more beneficial than hay).
Considering that the horse is always "running" whereas a steam engine is not, I think the fuel/work conversion ratio is excellent. However, there's a lot of "fuel" wasted during idle time. But all of that spent fuel becomes valuable fertilizer, which you don't really get from a steam engine.
The nice thing about horses is that for at least 7 months of the year (perhaps more, depending on location), they can gather their own fuel, whereas you would spend that time gathering fuel for a steam engine.
This isn't really going to convince anyone whose primary interest is facts & figures, but there are a number of side benefits to working draft animals. Mules for instance, can at times work unattended, as my great grandfather's mule would haul the hay wagon around to various stacks and wait for him. He also figured out how to work the latches on the farm gates and opened each one while the family was away one morning, which is something you steam engine will never do 8^)
I've found that our horses have pretty good "pattern recognition". Once they've tried a new task, they tend to figure out where to walk relative to the furrow or cut hay, etc, such that I could just about fall asleep and let them do the work. Farmers who are prone to narcolepsy may find that their horses stop at the end of a field when a tractor won't. I've never felt gratitude for our tractor as I have for our horses. One day we were logging and I thought they were straining especially hard on the log I'd hooked them too. They dug in and started it moving finally, at which point I realized that another log had come along for the ride. They managed to pull a double load and didn't balk.
And then there was the time a couple weeks ago when one of them came running up to me on pasture like he was going to trample me. Scared me at first, until he spun a 180 at the last second, when I realized that he had a horsefly attached to his fanny that he wanted me to smash.
You are right that there are all sorts of "intermediate technologies." Just looking at the history of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company is a good place to review these.
One nice advantage of the combine is the way it shreds and redistributes straw back on the field. Stationary threshers require the transport of the whole stalk and seed head AND straw would have to be spread back over the fields. I suspect most straw is actually used for animal bedding and this soiled bedding is then redistributed. But this is a lot of extra work and may not happen effectively much of the time. Hence, on farms fertility is constantly being moved towards the barn and away from distant fields.
Straw is quite valuable as bedding in a world where all the animals haven't been shipped off to CAFOs. Our straw is purchased, but gets used as bedding and returned to the fields in a horse drawn manure spreader. I see a lot of value in being able to bring it back to the barn easily myself.
Farming, imho, should be a combination of animals and crops, and has been for most of the history of agriculture. Agriculture went beserk about 70 years ago, imho, when we started separating animals from farming. Animals provide traction and allow you to funnel the nutrients to places that need them most, in addition to being direct food sources. They provide a net gain in fertility as well, probably mostly through bacterial innoculation that feeds the soil. Their presence attracts parasitic insects, which in turn attract birds which also eat crop pests... the list goes on and on.
Jason: They used to make manure spreaders to move fertilizer from the barn back to the field. On row crops anyway.
Spreaders are still used, but my point is that this is another bit of the work load that combines do in one pass.
However, spreading soiled straw is more valuable than shredded straw and chaff.
I agree about integrating animals back into farms. My current work is on a farm management model that does just that (www.farmlandlp.com). Pasture is used to rebuild soils, then land is cycled through annual crops and back to pasture. During annual crop phases you may still bring in animals for doing work such as eating down a legume cover crop before seeding grains directly into it, for example.
One of the difficulties current farms have is over specialization. Seed farms do seeds, they don't have time or expertise for livestock. This specialization was necessary to compete in the commodity market and have a scale that justifies the use of modern equipment. The trick is now to use the existing equipment in ways that still make sense during the transition while re-diversifying farms so that animals and plants are back into the synergistic relationships they need to thrive. This is management intensive but saves on energy and other farm inputs, which I believe makes sense now and going forward.
Keeping a modest number of animals on a small farm is also discouraged by regulations.
My parents had a flock of about 300 chickens and sold about 120 dozen eggs a week. I doubt whether that is still possible. You can either keep a few chickens and use the eggs yourself and sell the surplus to friends and neighbors, or you can scale up to 100,000s of layers and invest to meet the regulations. Salmonella testing and all that.
The regulations also discourage small dairying. Pigs and beef cattle are OK, but there it is a matter of scale and economic efficiency.
I doubt whether that is still possible.
HR 510 and the passed regs on animal tracking want you to either tag all your chickens with RFID or laser eye scan them with a $30,000 machine.
HR 510 has claims that if you grow any vegs that are sold - $500 a year fee to be entered into the database.
Fossil fuels have enabled that sort of "upscaling" which allows farmers to bring feed in from accross the country and sell back to the other side of the country. As these options dry up, the specialized and supersized will disappear, along with the regulations they've passed to squash their competition.
I don't know where you live but in Oregon a lot of small farms do poultry, either eggs or meat or both, selling in roadside stands, farmer's markets, or to retail outlets. You can get a state certified facility to process poultry on the farm, up to 20,000 birds, for example.
"The regulations also discourage small dairying"
I operate a small dairy and creamery in SW Virginia and don't find the regulations all that difficult to meet. Now, that may be the case in New York or my home state of Wisconsin, but in VA the state is very accommodating.
"Hence, on farms fertility is constantly being moved towards the barn and away from distant fields."
After which, the manure spreader is brought out and the greatly enriched straw and other wastes are spread back on the fields. So fertility, particularly nitrogen, is also constantly being moved toward the distant fields and away from the barn.
Cutting can be done with any sickle-bar mower, including horse-drawn, for a considerable labor savings over hand-scything. I just did this on our 1 acre winter wheat field with a walk-behind sickle mower. It's a pain in the butt to shock that grain, but our combine isn't working yet. Threshing requires a good deal of power, but winnowing doesn't take much more than a good breeze.
And I use a good deal of the history of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company (sickle mower and manure spreader), though the combine is an Allis-Chalmers.
I'd rather be able to keep the tractor and truck running.
kjmclark: Do you have an All-Crop? I've been contemplating one of those lately. Anything I can pull behind the horses... The only implement that I really can't find a horse drawn equivalent for is the brush hog (although there is an equivalent if I'm willing to use a pull behind gas powered model). Am thinking goats might be the answer. Slower working, but still quite effective.
The second video down on this page shows our spreader (a New Idea 12A) in action. They're absolutely wonderful machines. Ours will unload and spread a half ton in probably 2-3 minutes. http://haymanfarm.blogspot.com/2010/03/mmmmmmm-manure.html
Yeah, an AC-66. You could certainly pull it behind horses, but it needs about 30hp to run the machinery. That's part of what I would want to keep the tractor running for; the tractor powers the combine, along with just about everything else.
I passed up on a horse-drawn sickle mower around here a while ago. It was ground-driven, so in good shape, it would probably work almost as well as a brush hog. I think you're right about the goats though. Supposedly sheep are pretty serious mowers too, but goats will eat just about everything, including small trees, and conveniently deposit fertilizer while they're at it!
I'm not sure the term bush hog means the same thing all over the country;in my neck of the woods , it means a heavy duty rotary mower used with the three point hitch and pto of a farm tractor.My six footer has two blades mounted on hinges so that if it hits a big rock or stump the blade can swing away and not break up the machine;these two blades wiegh about thirty five or forty pounds EACH.
This implement smashes rocks as big as footballs like eggs, and grinds up saplings up to two or three inches in diameter when I ride then down, as well as mulching the limbs we sometimes leave on the ground if a tree breaks due to storm or too heavy a fruit crop.In heavy going it is about all a forty horsepower diesel can do to pull it and the tractor.
We can and do mow fields with it sometimes, using it like a giant lawnmower.If the blades have been sharpened recently and you gear down a gear or two to reduce travel speed, it will mow as clean as a lawnmower, and as short as two inches..
Lighter duty implements of this same general design are usually referred to as finish mowers around here, and are basically used like extra large heavy duty lawn mowers in nice clean fields .
Bush hogs require a lot more horse power than a sickle bar mower, but they are as fast or faster,and don't clog up in heavy going;they are also MUCH cheaper to maintain.A bush hog is a lifetime investment if you store it out of the rain.
We use both types, the sickle bar mower being reserved for hay and mowing underneath the friut trees;we mow the centers or balks with the bush hog most of the time.
Incidentally "Bush Hog" is a trademark, but nobody seems to be protecting it.
I've got one of those too -- for my tractor. They're wonderful machines -- great for opening up trails! If I want to use one when I sell the tractor, I've gotta buy one of the "Amish-ized" versions, which they use behind forecarts. They just have a motor mounted directly on the deck in lieu of a PTO drive.
Towing a motor around with the horses seems kind of stupid though, as I'm using them to avoid FF's. But I might be willing to make an exception for a combine though, as the alternative is just too much work.
We also use a horse drawn sickle bar for haying and trimming in the orchard - a McD/International #9 which I was lucky enough to find in excellent condition.
Back to the sickle bar for a minute-
A tractor mounted and powered sickle bar mower will cut a heavy growth of hay quite well if it is in good condition-nice sharp knives and new gaurds are a necessity in heavy going.
We have not used a horse drawn sickle bar within my memory except when I was a little kid, but I have seen one tried by a nieghbor in both light and heavy growth.So long as the going was good-the ground not too rough and the grass not too thick and standing up well, it mowed just fine.
But if the going gets heavy, the most minor clog up of heavy growth getting entangled between the knives and gaurds means stopping , backing a bit, and climbing off and clearing it.This can be very time consuming.But even so, my guess is that you can mow with a horse drawn sickle bar mower up to ten times faster than a very athletic man can mow with a scythe.
A tractor mower will generally clear itself by simply stopping for a second or two as it continues to run ;the vibration and reciprocating motion if the sickle bar will clear the clog or tangle nearly every time.
In my estimation, just about every farmer should have a scythe and three blades for it-a very light one for grass, a middle wieght one for heavier growth, and a short heavy one, which is capable of cutting saplings up to an inch or so , for very heavy going..Changing the blade takes only a minute or so and a single wrench.
There are generally some small areas -nooks and crannies, so to speak-that can be very efficiently maintained with a scythe.You can quickly clear a spot big enough to work around a machine sitting in a field of tall grass, or clear the grass under the bottom strand of an electric fence.The scythe is often faster than a weedeater in such circumstances, especially if cutting tall stringy grasses or vines that tend to wrap around the cutter head of the weedeater.A home owner sized and priced weed eater is virtually worthless in such heavy going.
We still use scythes to finish up under and close to our fruit trees after mowing with the tractor, but most orchardists use herbicides these days.
mow with a horse drawn sickle bar mower up to ten times faster than a very athletic man can mow with a scythe.
Upper body wattage output - 50-150 watts
1 horse power - 744 watts
So on a pure wattage basis - yup.
We do have sheep -- and I hear they'll eat brush as well, but it appears as if ours will only do it as a last resort. The goats (we had two which we had to put down due to Johnes disease) will eat the brush before they touch the grass.
I think many of us have our own version of the combine that we'd like to keep them going if at all possible. In my case they are my chainsaws, log splitter, rototiller and back-up generators. Granted that I could get by doing some of this manually but at 71 I certainly wouldn't look forward to it.
Todd
I've got "misery whips" waiting at the ready, but I'll second you on the chainsaw being among the most beneficial uses of FF. I do fine without the log splitter (moving them to the splitter seems nearly as much work as splitting them with a maul). With draft animals I can do alright without the rototiller as well. I'm perhaps a bit less creaky at 38 though.
An EROI of 34:1.
I have been quoting 10 units of oil energy to produce 1 unit of food energy. (food on the fork)
The Limits to Growth shows a mandatory diversion of the economy from industry to agriculture to avoid famine. This causes a fall in the per capita industrial output.
I am advising my son to study Mycology at university. It will beat sweating in the sun.
And all this against a background of the Climate Catastrophe.
Hi Arthur,
Check the cited article on the food system to review this information.
In brief, the EROI of just harvesting with combine is 34:1 (according to my anecdotal work here).
The EROI of the food system is about 1:10 but most of this is due to off farm consumption of energy. About 1/3 of this energy consumption is at the household level.
Farms themselves still use WAY too much energy and one of my main interests is sorting out how to reduce this. I may do a future post regarding my thoughts on methods to reduce on-farm energy use.
Mycology is good! Making sure we farm in ways that respect fungi is going to be very important for biological nutrient cycling without the availability of synthetic nutrient inputs.
Yes, I've always had a very deep respect for Saccharomyces cerevisiae...
Cheers!
Jason, the easiest way to save energy is to grow perennial wheat and rice
These would be great to have. I am following with interest. However, no commercial perennial wheats are for sale now. But perhaps in 10 years?
One issue is yields. I believe perennial wheats are getting about 10 bushels per acre, whereas most wheat farmers would expect 30-40 bushels (for the hard reds). If they can double yields to 20 bushels/acre I think there would be a lot of takers though.
Anybody with more details or direct experience with perennial grains for human food and animal fodder I'd love to talk.
The energy in the food system is not being expended on the farm.
We can save more energy in the food system by banning soft drinks, bottled water, candy, potato chips, corn chips, crackers, cookies, cakes, pastries, and other highly processed/packaged goods containing mostly fat and sugar than we spend on farms.
Stay out of the center aisles of the supermarkets folks.
No need to ban them -- as prices of energy rise, high-energy products will be at a disadvantage.
I'm afraid some folks would rather fight endless wars and re-establish slavery than give up their useless junk-food overpackaged luxuries. They'd scream about liberalism and do this.
...And avoid grain fed beef and pork.
Grain fed beef usually starts out on the range or in a pasture, and it goes to feedlot for the final finishing. So I'd prefer a small portion of beef to chicken, which typically are being fed grain in cages all their life.
Portion size and where you eat it also matter. The 16 oz prime rib at Outback is an energy, ecological, and medical disaster compared with the "deck of cards" sized portion of a shoulder cut at home.
Especially bacon.
http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2010/08/24/lunchtime-poll-achin-bacon/?hpt=C2
Thanks Jason for sharing your thoughts on this. I too think that certain forms of ag mechanization will persist for a long time. And that others will pass away, like center pivot irrigation.
One issue I heard about with combines was problems harvesting edible beans. An acquaintance tried doing locally grown black beans, but the combine mushed them. He tried resetting the combine many different ways, but still it would not harvest the beans well. Eventually he had to abandon the crop in the field, though there were a few gleaner parties out there where folks could harvest as many beans as they wished.
So there may be an opportunity evolving for those with the ability to create after-market parts for the older combines to allow them to harvest a wider range of seeds.
He may not have had the correct head on the combine, or, the beans weren't dry enough.
Wow not a single comment in the article or any comments about using electrified equipment. No batteries, but long, high-voltage AC cables connecting the tractor to the grid. You would have an automated cable winding that winds and unwinds itself accordingly, and the field would be traversed by the equipment in predetermined routes. Farmers could even perform tasks at night in order to capture the lower rate. Then the public can one day make a choice between going hungry or going nuclear.
Interesting. May work, as long as it is not too FORD: fix or repair daily.
lol nice acronym. Hopefully the Japanese would build them.
With electric motors, you really do get a medley of options, and most will never be in need of repair since there is only one moving part. You can also get away without a gearbox, one single converter of the motor torque to the wheels.
I should also add that very heavy trucks actually combust diesel but use the work to produce electricity for electric motors. That is, the fuel just powers an onboard generator.
EP: As in mine haul trucks and locomotives?
one single converter of the motor torque to the wheels.
Realy EngineeringPhysicist? Please tell me how. We are running a variable frequency drive on the C-PET but still require a reduction box and a 3.75:1 chain reduction.
All Italians please forgive me, but Fiat -fix it again , Tony, is much more appropriate in terms of reliability-used to be anyway.
Mac: I was wondering if anyone would pick up on that! No slur, on my part, intended towards FoMoCo. Not much of one at any rate! Heh! Heh!
Found On Road Dead is my fav.
yes... I've worked some of this thru in my head, but I still like DC
I think an overhead wire would be way more workable than some sort of self winding contraption
I thought the overhead wire at first too, but it is sort of wasteful if you think about all those farm acres, and a little unaesthetic. I was imagining a cable that is kept minimally taut between the tractor and a winder maybe 10m off the ground. This would work for a continuous field with no trees/buildings in the way. I was thinking single-phase AC to minimize the power electronics to just a simple transformer, assuming the grid in rural areas will always be doing AC.
Btw, do you know if the average farm has access to three-phase from the local utility in North America? I am not sure on that one.
I suppose a cable system such as you propose COULD be built, and made sufficiently robust to run a heavy machine such as a combine.
But if you think such a system can be built at a reasonable cost-a cost comparable to even very expensive biodiesel produced from crops grown for that purpose,I suspect that your physics expertise/experience is academic rather than industrial.
I doubt that the necessary cables could be bought for less than five to ten dollars a foot , given current prices of cable I buy occasionally, such as welding leads.
And it would be so heavy once extended past the first few hundred feet that it would be impossible to keep it off the ground, even if it were attached to a tower twenty feet high and mounted to the top of the combine cab.This problem would be further complicated by the fact that fields are not necessarily level-hills and valleys are the rule rather than the exception.
Enough cable to get the juice out to the big fields, which are often a long way from the closest grid supply , would cost a fortune;and while electric motors are indeed very efficient and reliable, I find it hard to imagime that the savings in fuel could ever offset the extra cost in labor and lost working time-combines are driven from field to field along public roads. Biodiesel in the quantities needed for field work will almost certainly prove to be far more economical and practical taken all the way around.
Where I live three phase is currently required for new installations but many areas are not upgraded or have any service whatsoever. The distance from service to the far end of the field could easily be half a mile to a mile. Seems a bit doubtful considering the layout where I live, not only for power but also the irregularity of fields and the issues of trees, hedgerows and fences, etc., but hey, perhaps it is worth a try and we adapt where grains grow accordingly.
I like the way you guys think big. Maybe future farming will look something like this:
Semi-autonomous, solar-assisted migrant workers. Turn a couple of dozen wheat harvesting robots loose on a field and watch them work from your wind-powered office.
Its already been suggested in the past. 1-2 HP units on tethers.
Three phase power is scarce in rural areas but not unheard of;perhaps ten percent of the farms in my part of the country are close enough to thre phase lines to get it.
Folks located along highways and close to town have the best shot.
There are transformer to get from 2 phase to 3 phase. IIRC they are about $2500 for a big one. 100amp+
Can you do all farming in circles like an irrigation mechanism, perhaps also working as a support for power cables? Now high-voltage AC and water should be an interesting mix......
A grid will work better - one in an X that is the 'mothership' to a Y that goes up/down 100-200 foot rows.
20HP x 1KVA/HP = about 20KVA. 480V 3-phase gives about 1.2A per KVA (2.8 for 208V), so that's 24A (or 56A).
So yes, that's about 60A for 208V 3-phase (per your other post). Obviously higher-voltages are better (but with other risks - though streetcars often use over 500V, IIRC), and lower-gauge cable would be big plus for any installation.
Bump up to 300HP and the problem is much worse -- really you'd need something like 15KV to make that sensible.
You can imagine systems that might work, but nothing anywhere near as simple as pouring in some diesel and driving wherever you want.
Edit: The better solution would likely be to use ammonia as a fuel. It can be produced by wind (see the Stranded Wind articles), and is already needed for farming as fertilizer, so distribution could be shared. It's dangerous, but for outdoor applications not overly so.
Bump up to 300HP and the problem is much worse -- really you'd need something like 15KV to make that sensible.
Hence my long term position - the only electrification that makes any kind of sense would be low HP. The resource consumption
Edit: The better solution would likely be to use ammonia as a fuel
Assuming that a farming did not revert back to the old 'we grow our own fuel here' model. The older ones grows fuel for oat burners. The diesel engine was ment for plant oils...oilseed you grow on the land.
Ammonia as fuel might be a farm sized solution if one can come up with a farm sized ammonia maker. I've not seen costs on the electricity on one end ammonia on the other machines however.
It's not as cheap as today's NG ammonia, but not far off either. Equates to something like $4-6 gallon-equivalent vs gasoline. Runs in a mildly modified diesel, too. Oilseed diesel could light it off.
Ammonia wouldn't always be "on farm", but could be "nearby" such as a wind farm, solar PV site, etc.
I'd still like to see pricing on 'for this watts in and this material input you get X volume out and it costs $y.' Additional credit to the source if their process output is linear on power input and can be stopped and restarted without damaging thermoshock.
All I know is second hand from the guy here who posted as Stranded Wind. Water, air, and electricity are the inputs. Note that there are unit errors in the last point on power versus energy when making the ammonia, so this is still a bit rough.
From the Freedom Fertilizer FAQ:
What happens when the wind doesn't blow?
Electricity generated from wind power can be highly variable at several different timescales: hourly, daily and seasonally. Because instantaneous electrical generation and consumption must remain in balance to maintain grid stability, this variability can present substantial challenges to incorporating large amounts of wind power into a grid system. Intermittency and stranded wind energy production can raise costs and require energy demand management, load shedding or storage solutions.
How can wind be used to make nitrogen fertilizer?
By using wind power to create electricity we can power a Solid State Ammonia Synthesis (SSAS) reactor or produce hydrogen from water using electrolysis to be used in the Haber-Bosch reaction, which will create ammonia or NH3.
How much electrical power does it require to produce a ton of ammonia?
Using the Haber-Bosch method approximately 12,000 plus kw per ton; using the newly developed SSAS process approximately 8000 kw per ton.
Solid State Ammonia Synthesis (SSAS) reactor
I remember mention of it some time ago. Sounded linear and like it could start/stop with little negative effect.
Like so many things - now lets see when I can place an order for one :-(
(Haber-Bosch has thermal and pressure 'penalties' for starting and stopping as I remember. Not as harsh as say a glass furnace or a foundry cupola but they still have thermal cycle issues)
I was thinking single-phase AC
How many horsepower will these units have?
How do you plan on keeping the power consumption in phase between the legs?
I have no idea how much power a combine needs to put out but if we can build electric trucks like these I have a hunch you could build electric combines as well.
http://green.autoblog.com/2008/06/17/heavy-duty-really-heavy-duty-electr...
Of course I myself am partial to this concept.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFYpNrbyKCA&feature=related
BTW those prices have come way down since that video was made. I can get a 175 watt panel today for a little over $300.00 each.
Up to 591 horsepower (345 KWatt) on the New Hollands. They need to run continously from the time in the morning when the dew is off until the straw begins to get tough after dark.
Possibly, an electric might be simpler, since separate motors could be used for the header, thresher, straw disposal, grain unloader, propulsion, lights, air conditioning, etc. Peak output would be determined by requirements. For example, do you need to continue harvesting at full speed after dark while unloading the grain bin into a truck driving alongside? Or can you stop and turn out the lights while you unload?
Merrill: Open cabs and a big umbrella, like we used to have, are perfectly acceptable so as to do away with the air conditioner and the compressor robbing horsepower put into the ground. Heck, I ran dozers with an umbrella in the summer and canvas shrouds around the engine in the winter for years. Enclosed cabs were something we just dreamed about!
Don't forget about the dust. Combining is dusty work. I can remember coming off an AC 66 covered with dirt and that dirt also gets in your lungs and causes respiratory problems in old age. The cab on the newer combines are designed to minimize the dust the operators breath.
goat: I saw plenty of dust, winter and summer, on those dozers. A good bandana wrapped around my face was de rigeur for the times. I'm still alive! Heh! Heh! So far, anyhow. Just the way it was.
Lights are at *most* 2KW.
Let's say the unload auger is 50KW.. so you slow down from 4mph to 3.5mph while unloading.
Now, if you can find a battery pack that can store 300x12 == 3.6 Megawatt-hours and weighs less than a ton, you have solved the world's renewable energy problems cause we can just use those to store solar and wind when grid connected. The last place such a battery will get used is a combine, because it's way more valuable connected to the grid.
There's no necessity for batteries that can run for 12 hours. Sure, it would be convenient, but it's not necessary.
Batteries can be trucked to the field in swappable packs. Farm tractors are a fleet application, so they're not subject to the same limitations as cars and other light road vehicles(i.e., the need for small, light batteries and a charging network). Providing swap-in batteries is much easier and more practical.
The combine described in the Original Post used about 73.5 gallons in a 12 hour day. That's about 735 kWhs (assuming 25% conversion efficiency), or about 61 kWh, or about 82HP on average. 735kWhs in a li-ion battery would weigh about 6.5 tons, so if a combine could carry a ton of batteries, it would have to stop to "refuel" every 2 hours.
So...how much weight could a combine carry?
Nick: I hope it is thee, and not me, loading and unloading those things all day. Twice, for each trip out to the field. Plus the downtime to swap 'em out.
That would be automated, as Better Place is doing.
Nick: while we are swapping batteries out, lets hope it doesn't rain or hail in the meantime. I have seen corn fields and wheat fields mowed down, as with a brush hog or sickle bar, in a few minutes time. the whole year's effort gone before one's very eyes.
Good point: it's very likely that an electric combine would be an Extended Range EV: it would have a small onboard generator, like the the Chevy Volt.
Such a design would be 50-100% more efficient than a traditional diesel only combine, and would allow extended operation in a weather emergency.
Farm diesels are often running at load continually -- there is no breaking-recovery or coast period to deal with. You match your implements and speed to the power you have available, and run. The only electric solution I could see would be an overhead wire-set, or perhaps a massive flow-battery tank.
Farming with solar would mean a 2 month harvesting operation due to solar collection and storage limits. No sources for that, just a guess. How would this effect the harvest to have to spread it out? With unlimited batteries this could be avoided, but my question to any farmer is, what would it do to the quality of the harvest if you could only use electric powered devices for 1 hour a day. How would a slow harvest affect your output?
Not sure where you heard suggestions for purely Solar in this conv. yet.. but there are farms with Wind Turbines nearby, too.. yet even so, you'd have to be looking to grid power to drive big rigs, and not just one or two nearby renewable supplies.
Of course, there are little guys who are using some..
http://www.flyingbeet.com/electricg/solar.html
.. while it will be easy to trash his enjoyment of how Cool it is, one thing he doesn't and could get to in his justification for the solar, is that it gives him additional flexibility, or more appropriately, resilience of supply. I don't know how to put a dollar figure on that, but that he can power both the Tractors and then the Farmhouse from this system (including whatever range of Electrical Tools and Appliances would fit within an emergency electricity budget) .. this is not an insignificant advantage, while yes, it's expensive out of the gate. It's clear that a number of advantages can and do add into this figuring.
Not sure where you heard suggestions for purely Solar in this conv. yet.
Technically almost all Ag is solar. That solar energy may be expressed as diesel fuel - but without the solar input at some point that diesel would not exist.
grid power to drive big rigs
The grid isn't going to be powering 300+HP rigs. Or the 800 HP 'big' rigs.
"All Ag is Solar."
Eric, am I going to have to make you stay after and clean the erasers? Will you please listen to the conversation at hand, and not just jump a topic out to the 'Universals'?
"Big Rigs won't be Grid Powered."
Possibly not, but from your lips to God's ears, man. It's theoretical, and like those little Solar Tractors on CSA farms, it might find a scale that works for it. But the comments by Sharkman moved it into a literally 'Drive your combines when the sun shines'.. which is turning that issue into a Strawman argument. It wasn't even being proposed, and for good reason.
Personally, the distro system that I have thought about is based on the Circular Crops, but has a road going into the hub of each circle, into which you drive a truck with a centerpivot and a long trailered gantry that rotates with your electric combine. This way your power AND/OR irrigation equipment is portable, possibly even just hired when needed, instead of having to create some kind of permanent infrastructure covering all the fields .. and it should require far less Wire overall. Just a thought.
Personally, the distro system that I have thought about is based on the Circular Crops, but has a road going into the hub of each circle, into which you drive a truck with a centerpivot and a long trailered gantry that rotates with your electric combine.
Start doing the power calcs and material calcs. A mule pulled, liquid fueled 25 HP thesher is going to need 60 amp 220 V 3 phase service and if powered from 1 electric motor one rather expensive NEMA prime mover that you'll need to add weight to dump the heat of 18,000 watts of heat while the unit/heat sink sits in the sunlight.
Now add in the materials for the boom, the conductors to get to the boom.
The go big model is going to be hard to do, unless the 'quantum battery' or perhaps Stargate Zero Point modules come into existence/use.
Material use rates and no big change in batteries (These 2 factors translate to watts in the field) means the only robots in ag will be small ones. What farming operations can afford the copper consumption for tethered hi-power use? What operations can afford the short lifetime batteries of any type?
Dual-electrolyte flow batteries could potentially offer long-life, volume, and portability. But nothing like diesel fuel's density.
Energy Density:
Vanadium-Bromide flow battery - .25
Diesel - 37 (bio-diesel about 33)
Ammonia - 11.5
Ethanol - 24
Lead Acid - .36
Hydrogen (700bar) - 5.6
Ethanol and ammonia are "workable", as certainly is bio-diesel. Ammonia makes a better "storage battery" for stranded wind than hydrogen.
Flow batteries work only if you have a large portable tank for electrolyte. They are "better" than other batteries in that all you need is a vat of electrolyte, while the active component is pretty small.
A medium-large farm here in Saskatchewan is 3-4 sections (square miles, 1920-2560 acres) and not in one block. This much land can be harvested with one medium-large combine like a John Deere 9770. 360 horsepower boosted to 385 HP for unloading on the go. 250 US gallon fuel tank, and it will burn most of that in a hard day's running. 300 bushel hopper X 60 lb/bushel wheat = 18,000 lb. Now how much battery power will that take, figuring one set in use, one in transit and two charging back at the yard. There's no 3 phase power either. Next, build a power grid that can supply enough power for 65,000,000 acres and a 30 day harvest run.
360 horsepower boosted to 385 HP ... There's no 3 phase power ... Next, build a power grid that can supply enough power
Which is why electric tractors of such scale won't happen. Even a 20 HP tractor needs 60+ amp 3 phase. #6 AWG. Every 12 foot of wire is gonna weigh a pound of just copper (thus the 4 conductors will weigh 4 lbs in copper.)
Go ahead - start calculating the "lets have 12 packs of batteries" how much weight you'll need to cover the amp-hours.
Quantum batteries! We store them in a alt. universe! And run the wires there as well!
On a more serious note, what is the max that a chemical battery could store per pound? When does energy density become to much like a bomb to be safely used? We all accept the bomb-like properties of gasoline, can we accept batteries with the same dangers, and some already created can come close.
You need to think outside the box . . . so, if creating a MASSIVE combine is too hard to do . . . then don't do it! Make smaller ones and run several of them at a time in parallel. Use lighter materials such as carbon fiber instead of steel.
Engineering is all about trade-offs. If you hit the limit in one area, then you find another area that can compensate. What is with this defeatist attitude? Fortunately most engineers are more creative and come up with solutions instead of just throwing up their hands and saying "It can't be done!" Certainly there are limits. We can't go the speed of light. But we are talking about running a tractor here, not interstellar space travel. It can be done.
Make smaller ones and run several of them at a time in parallel.
And in past threads this model has been suggested. Go ahead - look 'em up.
Other than running a bar cutter - you'll be hard pressed to run the thresher/harvest part of an operation on low wattage.
What is with this defeatist attitude?
When a plan that is being suggested is not gonna work for obvious physical reasons - here on TOD you get told that.
There is nothing defeatist in noting that rural areas lack the ability to obtain high wattage.
Nor in noting the inability to obtain enough material to wire up the fields with high wattage.
Nor in mentioning how the 223000 watts of heat energy will be dissipated with a 300 HP electo-tractor while it bakes in the hot sun.
It can be done.
Then show the math. Show the math of the materials to run a 300 HP motor.
Then do it for a 20 HP motor.
Show how much copper you need, how you are going make that conductor flexable. The cost of the motors. The cost of the heat sinks to keep the motors in their thermodynamic happy range.
Do the math.
After you do the math you'll see that small electric (unless magic portable electric power happens) will be how it goes down.
You will also see that the 'save the oil for the combines' is the best answer we have unless you want to propose cutting down the number of humans so the demand will therefore drop.
pull behind pto's, obviously a lot narrower a cut, 1/10 that hp, possibly 1/25th (will test that next year).
I suspect the high cost is due to the enormous batteries. Remember, I am proposing a no-battery solution. Hey, the tractor covers a very limited ground. Why not leverage that and accept we do not need mobility.
The average farm is over 1/2 square mile in area. Expensive farm implements, like combines, are often used over a larger area. In some parts of the country, the owner may defray part of his expenses by doing custom harvesting for his friends and neighbors locally. In the wheat growing region from Texas to Alberta, custom combiners operate fleets of machines that move north as crops of winter wheat, spring wheat, canola and flax ripen.
my backup for broadcasting, and chain harrowing is an polaris EV charged by solar panels. Seed drilling and combining are a long way off. disc harrowing is possible if i can find the right sized one. general rule of thumb is to do medium scale (100 acres) with atv/4x4things you need to look at farm implements from the 40's, 50's, 60's.
Wow not a single comment in the article or any comments about using electrified equipment.
Read the comments more closely.
Then the public can one day make a choice between going hungry or going nuclear.
I'm all for nuclear fusion. In fact, life on Earth would not happen with Fusion.
Obviously, combines are entirely reliant on barrels and barrels of liquid fuel.
As noted in a comment above, this is highly unrealistic. Farm tractors can be electric, or hybrid . Here's a light electric tractor . Batteries can be trucked to the field in swappable packs. Farm tractors are a fleet application, so they're not subject to the same limitations as cars and other light road vehicles(i.e., the need for small, light batteries and a charging network). Providing swap-in batteries is much easier and more practical. Zinc-air fuel cells can just be refuelled. Many sources of power are within the weight parameters to power modern farm tractors, including lithium-ion, Zebra batteries, ZAFC's and the latest lead-acid from Firefly Energy, and others.
Most farmers are small and suffering, but most farm acreage is being managed by large organizations, and is much more profitable. Those organizations will just raise their food prices, and out-bid personal transportation (commuters and leisure travel) for fuel, so they'll do just fine. As farm commodities are only a small %of the final price of food, it won't make much difference to food prices. The distribution system, too, will outbid personal transportation for fuel. Given that overall liquid fuel supplies are likely to only decline 20% in the next 20 years, that gives plenty of time for a transition.
Finally, diesel farm tractors can run on vegetable oil, with minor modifications. Ultimately, farmers are net energy exporters (whether it's food, oil or ethanol), and will actually do better in an environment of energy scarcity.
How many swap in batteries do you need? How much does each set cost? How fast do they recharge? How much do they weigh? Are any major farm equipment companies in research and development stages for electrification so we can foresee a time horizon for commercialization?
You are amazingly optimistic on decline rates.
Straight veggie oil might be a good way to go if electric doesn't scale. Even that has many challenges I could go into (i.e., not all modifications are "minor").
How many swap in batteries do you need? How much does each set cost? How much do they weigh?
See my other notes today.
How fast do they recharge?
Depends on the chemistry: some can recharge to 80% in 30 minutes. OTOH, you might charge overnight. 450kWhs over 12 hours would be about 40kW: that's not that bad. That's a 440V, 100A load.
Are any major farm equipment companies in research and development stages for electrification so we can foresee a time horizon for commercialization?
Good question. There's a lot of work everywhere else: diesel trains, DOD tanks, mining, short-haul trucks. I'll take another look at tractors.
Battery costs will continue to decline, and liquid fuel costs will likely rise at least a little. At some point those lines will cross, but it may well be long after most of the rest of the economy is electrified.
You are amazingly optimistic on decline rates.
Heck, Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International, is predicting only a 11% annual decline rate over the next 20 years: Look at page 40 of the presentation: http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Aleklett/20090611%20Sydney4.pdf
On page 42 of the presentation - we see that this projection is precisely in the middle - between the "Standard Case High End" and "Standard Case Low End".
Straight veggie oil might be a good way to go if electric doesn't scale. Even that has many challenges I could go into (i.e., not all modifications are "minor").
If you have the time to provide details, please do.
When diesel gets expensive I suspect farm fuel will be taxed lower as in the Brit's red diesel/green diesel system. I can also picture CNG cylinders bolted on the back of harvesters with maybe a mother cylinder back at the farm house.
The next problem for broadacre cropping is the sheer mass of NPK require over the vast prairies. Plowing in a green manure crop also needs high powered machines and I understand the resulting soil nitrogen quickly tapers off. Phosphate recovered from urban sewage may be expensive, contaminated and limited. In the future the world will have more mouths to feed but yields from prairie farming could be less, not more.
The FAO suggests we get more of our calories from root crops like potatoes. Growing is local and doesn't require big machines and vast areas. The trouble is that grain products like bread are such a major food source. I believe Egypt for example subsidises bread production. If diesel and NPK are in short supply age old practices may return such as stubble burning and fallowing with less average annual grain production. A major population decrease would help.
Well I have good news for you! We WILL SAVE IT FOR THE COMBINE!
And we don't need to do anything special for that to happen . . . the free market will take care of it. We all need to eat. If our food doubles in price, we will pay it. We like not starving to death. Perhaps we will cut down on meat & more expensive foods.
But we don't need to drive an Escalade to work. If we need more money to pay for food, we will sell the Escalade and buy an EV or a high mileage car.
I think all the people that worry about some food shortage apocalypse due to oil shortages are misguided. There definitely will be problems . . . prices will go up and those people that are barely getting enough food right now may really suffer. But largely, the market will adjust . . . we will use less oil elsewhere in order to make oil available for food production. This will occur because we are willing pay more for food. It is at the very base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg
spec: +100 on that!
the free market will take care of it.
What free market?
Do show one.
I fully agree with you that we do not have a 100% free market. But the point still stands since the market is largely free.
(There are parts of the market that I would like more free and other parts I'd like less free, but that is just nitpicking.)
But the point still stands since the market is largely free.
Just because you hand wave doesn't make it true. At what point does a market stop being 'largely a free market'?
If 25% of a nations people are either in jail or out of jail with the label 'ex offender' - is such a nation a police state?
You've put your finger on a main problem with nearly all these "discussions." Peakers jump all over people (rightly) when they make the straw man argument that oil will soon "run out," but then they turn right around and talk in terms of "when oil in no longer available," even speculating that we'll be returning to draft animals soon.
What you're seeing is not rationality but wishful thinking. People view the future as if it were a looking glass: they see their own fat asses staring back at themselves. The agrarian romantics are probably second only to the Mad Max crowd in this tendency to project their wishes onto the blank slate of tomorrow.
"People view the future as if it were a looking glass: they see their own fat asses staring back at themselves. The agrarian romantics are probably second only to the Mad Max crowd in this tendency to project their wishes onto the blank slate of tomorrow."
If only tomorrow were a blank slate...
Gee, if only we could make our problems go away by smugly insulting those who have concerns about limits to growth, we'd be all set! I mean, why wrestle with the depressing trend-lines when we can just name-call and character assassinate our way back to complacency?
We currently overproduce grains on a massive scale. So in theory I agree with you that we could adjust to less grains and not starve.
However, the market, in my view, is a big part of the problem and not a reason to "relax."
For example, a functioning market is required to provide the flow of credit farmers need. A grain farmer might need several tens of thousands of dollars in operating credit each year. If this is not available because the financial markets go dysfunctional during a critical time then the crop doesn't get planted or harvested properly.
Also, the market requires a person to have money to purchase food. But we are currently seeing lots of layoffs and 10s of millions of people do suffer in the US from a shortage of food and poor food quality. This has nothing to do with availability, mind you, just that the market is deciding that it is a better allocation of resources to let 10s of millions suffer while those who just happen to have jobs still can continue to buy cheap meat.
Regarding "selling Escalade..." How does that solve anything in a system-wide basis? Who's the Escalade being sold too? A teenager getting their first vehicle?
Part of the point of this article was that we want to save fuel BEFORE there are major problems. The market doesn't look ahead to head any of these off. In fact, it seems to be doing a great job of stoking demand for frivolous stuff and won't give any signal of scarcity until it is way too late.
"I think all the people that worry about some food shortage apocalypse due to oil shortages are misguided."
So no problems as we race forward towards 10+ billion people AND suffer the impacts of climate change?
Nice that you're looking at the big picture.
And yet 1B people are short of food already.
During World War 2, we did indeed save it for the combine. Farmers got preferential treatment with fuel rationing.
And the market will also prefer fuel be used for combines. People want to eat, and the market knows it. That said, it takes a whole growing season for a price signal to reach from the market, to the farmers, and back, and I'd rather not wait that long as the energy crunch intensifies. So if government beancounters decree this before the market does, no skin off my back.
Small scale corn production ...
no combine .. store grain on the cob until needed
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3608/3642301136_efb3e03418_z.jpg?zz=1
Have you harvested corn by hand? Where did you get your gloves and hooks to do that? In Iowa or Nebraska? Do you have a silo to store the corn in? What is small scale production, in your mind? Just curious here. What did you use to throw the husked corn into and haul it back to storage? A wagon? Did you tie the shocks up while shucking, or leave that to the follow up crew? Just curious.
My family grew corn in small quantities (up to three or four acres per household some years) for on farm use up until around the late eighties.Mostly everything was done with tractors, but even then the old folks still had one last mule for old times sake and worked him for a few days every year.
You can make a corn knife in a few minutes if you are handy from an old saw blade , or buy something suitable at a hardware store.Corn was sometimes cut off at ground level, and gathered into "shocks" and left in the field, to be hauled in and fed to the last two cows as needed;or the ears pulled from the standing corn, and hauled to the barn to be shucked, shelled and sometimes ground into meal during the off season.Corn left standong after the ears were pulled was usually left to be plowed under, but if in a fenced field, it was common to let a mule or cow graze into the the field. Most of the corn was fed to the livestock-a couple of dairy cows, a horse, a mule,lots of chickens, and a few pigs..Sometimes a few bushels were sold or traded to a nieghbor..
You need either good tough lightwieght gloves-expensive-or well developed calluses to shuck and shell corn by hand;it's hard, slow work.
Anybody seriously interested in powering down should give some thought to finding an antique cast iron hand cranked corn sheller;these machines were built to last more or less forever, and you can do five or six ears a minute with one , maybe more, if you have good arm and shoulder muscles, for a good long stretch.
Incidentally, even the most hard core of the now departed generations of my family did not find it worth while to grow wheat-enough for the family biscuits - in small quantities;they bought or traded for thier flour from people who grew enough to trade or sell;and this in spite of the fact that one of my great grandfathers was a local miller!
My grand mothers tradd dried apples for flour for many years, finding it greatly to thier advantage to do so.That and taking corn to the mill to be ground for meal lasted into my early childhood;I never knew my great grandfather the miller;he died before I was born.
Anybody seriously interested in powering down should give some thought to finding an antique cast iron hand cranked corn sheller
CS Bell sells these new and would have replacement parts.
http://www.csbellco.com/corn-sheller.asp
(A 100 watt motor should work fine....say an electric drill motor *wink*)
eric: A feller could really have the corn cobs a-flyin hooked up to a 1/2 in. drill!! Heh! Heh!
My guess - a nice hand injury due to the normal operation of remove hand from power source to eject the ear of corn. But hey, at least the old hand units are still out there.
365 corn plants per year per adult.
Shelled out daily by hand (no gloves) and germinated and hand ground
eaten daily with beans and seasonal vegetables - olive oil - dried fruit and nuts
wheel barrow and picking sack to harvest ... stored in 4x4' fruit bins
No food purchased for over 13 years ... all food from farm/garden
Crops hand planted , cultivated , and harvested
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3525/3766331632_4dbfa88d78_b.jpg
No refrigeration -no animal products
Class of 67 School of Agriculture CSUF
Chemical energy, gunpowder engine? Would it be worth it?
Last week I pulled a seven foot combine with a team of four horses and mules. I had about an acre of wheat which I plan to grind for home use. Very fun and satisfying work. You can see a couple of pictures here. www.picasaweb.google.com/mulemandonn/combine#
Donn, how many horsepower is the the engine on your forecart?
25 hp. Honda gas engine. I use it for baling hay (about 3000 this year). I use it for mowing with a 7' haybine, but I also mow a lot of hay with a horse drawn sickle bar mower.
Thanks, Donn. Take care that you don't make horse (or mule) farming look too easy. Do you have a source for parts for that JD combine?
I grow grains and beans here in Southern Canada. Last year I used about 3000 litres of diesel to grow 150 acres of crops (all mechanized- ploughing, cultivating, harvesting); about 20 litres per acre for everything. One SUV might burn as much fuel in a year as I do working 150 acres.
Here are some thoughts:
3000 litres cost me about $2400, on total farm expenses of about $28000, so under 10% of my costs. If the price of diesel doubled ($300 oil) and the price of grain increased by only 10%, I would be better off financially than I am with current prices.
If I wanted to grow my own diesel, I figure it would have to devote about 10% of my land to canola (including cover crop to support canola). Anyone have an idea how that would compare to using horses?
In a good year, an acre of my land (no manure source or fertilizer, and inexperienced farmer) should grow enough grain to completely feed 3 people, so that's about 7 litres of fuel per person, per year for food (at the farm gate, minus vegetables and animal products).
How much grain per person/year ? What kind of grain ? How much grain for animal products ?
Based on my rotation of: y1-grain (rye, spelt or oats), y2-beans (soy or kidney) y3-cover crop. Yield on grain=1300kg/acre, beans=700kg/acre, cover crop=0kg/acre, for an average of 666kg/acre/year (mix of grain and beans). This would provide 222kg/person/year (grain bean mix), enough for a 2300 calorie/day diet with complete protein.
This assumes no grain is fed to animals, so if you want animal products or vegetables on top of that you would need more land.
I also want to note that the more experienced organic farmers around me are getting better yields. I'm still getting the hang of this.
Anyone have an idea how that would compare to using horses?
Previous postings claimed 25% all the way up to 50%.
"Anyone have an idea how that would compare to using horses?"
20 to 33% covers the range from my readings. So growing fuel crops is more land efficient that horses.
But there is a ringer; if you have land good for pasture but not plowable, (too steep, too rocky, too wet most of the year) then the math can easily shift to favor the horses. One size does not fit all.
So growing fuel crops is more land efficient that horses.
The closer one gets to photons -> work the less land/surface area is needed.
The "lower" the biology involved with the conversion the better the conversion rate typically.
Isn't that what Entropy is ?
John Deere stock price went from $90 to $25 fairly quickly 2008-2009. I can definitely see them going out of business on the next leg down. I don't think the risk of dependence on machinery is worth it until it can be proved that a corporation can survive overall declining economic growth.
Seems like a hydrogen-powered combine is what to aim for. Yes, I know we are a long way from there.
I think biomass is probably most useful plowed back into the soil, with rotation used and legumes planted when possible for N fixing. Phosphorus is reportedly the big looming problem. Too bad city sewage is so polluted by people flushing chemicals, metals, pharmaceuticals, etc. down. The reclaimed sludge used as fertilizer makes me nervous for those reasons.
Someone developed cheap optical sensors for sewer analysis, enabling anyone throwing undesireable stuff into toilets to be potentially identified and fined. I don't have to say this technology has languished.
The South is plagued by kudzu because only goats will eat it. Kudzu's a legume. Goats provide manure. Hello?! I like me some goat cheese.
Boys and their toys.
Hand agriculture has been used for centuries , even without draft animals.
Go out and grow a crop of grain by hand instead of typing dreams on your computer.
And do come back and mention how much it sucks VS the purchase of milled product at $0.25 a lbs.
It seems that the arguments and views contained within all the posts on this thread are basically the same as the ones I've read over the many years on TOD. Little has changed, indicating that no consensus has emerged as to what we should be doing to mitigate the severe threats we face.
That just about sums it up for me, our future is going to be determined entirely by events. We're just going to drive headlong into the future (possibly in electric noddy carts) and only the Devil may care about the outcome. But, then that's what I've always suspected.
In the end, we're just going to make pragmatic decisions, as with Jason's selection of the combine, as we go along. Deciding what to keep and what not to keep, based on what makes sense locally as we slide ever deeper into the long descent.
Edit:
Just came across this web site which may be of interest, amongst other things it covers adapting farm tools for animal power.
You may not witness any 'solutions in consensus' here in the department of Arguments, (or is this Contradictions?) .. but that doesn't mean nothing is coming out of the people who post here. This is just the echo chamber.
Even if some are working in equal and opposite force to those who are going the direction you would like, it's doubtful that TOD will provide you a neat and clean representation for 'who'll win'.. while out in the field, really the results will also be mixed. The court of the future will have to be the judge.
It reminds me of the constant refrain about how 'we don't build quality products like in the old days..' It (finally) occurred to me that all of the cheap and worthless stuff that was made back then has already been destroyed or decayed, so what we have all these years later to remember the old days by, IS the stuff that was well made. I'm not saying there hasn't been a change to many poorer bits of junk.. seems likely there has, with planned obsolescence gaining favor in the 50's, and then pure 'Disposability' becoming sacred sometime after that.
In the meantime, if there is a 'WE' who are pulling the right train forward.. then almost none of us know each other.. it will have to be painted as a great Movement sometime later, as the cumulative results hopefully achieve some success.
"..Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
"Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. " - H.W. Longfellow from 'Psalm of Life'
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/poem1339.html
jokuhl: Well said, Sir!!
You may not witness any 'solutions in consensus' here in the department of Arguments, (or is this Contradictions?) .. but that doesn't mean nothing is coming out of the people who post here. This is just the echo chamber.
But what Burgundy will find over time is people will change their position based on data. So the hashing out the same topics helps to refine arguments and, on occasion, get people to change their minds.
Hopefully showing the expense of batteries and the size needed to run a 255 HP combine will have people decide 'nope - not gonna happen'. And if it CAN happen - they can show their work to convince the doubters.
FWIW, Eric,
My Cirle-crop system was for a movable Grid Power tether.
I don't have any particular stake in the 'Big Battery' argument.. but Battle on, I agree well enough with your initial comment, and we do all get at least a chance to have a clearer view with the extra perspectives given.
Bob
The crop circle is an interesting idea - seems to need some land shaping.
It would be good for 'em to place the circle inside a small wall - I'm remembering that a 50deg slope of plastic 7 inches high is enough to boost spiders and therefore boost the killing on pests.
One more thought about grid-sourced approach is that such a proposal might work in farm areas close to the (Many) new windfarms that are rising in the MidWest. This isn't just to hang the loads on that windpower, but to take advantage of the Grid improvements that the Windfarm brings along with it.
As with anything here at TOD, I'm not Polarized about all this. Diesel and BioDiesel are surely forces to be reckoned with.. but I think we do need to look at more of the tools in our toolboxes, and there will be places where such Electric Harvesting Tools might be the smartest solutions.. Maybe near Niagara and such, as well.. All said, I'm not sanquine about the Externalities, be they the pollution the Trade issues of buying foreign HC's, or the simple vulnerability of not having any alternative approach than using liquid fuels.
I, too, might blush like a little girl when witnessing the raw, awesome power of these magical liquids.. but it doesn't take long to recall the shortcomings, and the Upcoming 'Shortcoming'..
There's always a catch for the Genie in the Bottle.
"Magnificent Powers, Teeny Tiny Living Space." - Aladdin
Bob
Good thoughts: we really don't need one-size fits all solutions.
Electric Harvesting Tools might be the smartest solutions..
The closest I see to electroharvest is motor drives the wheels, fixed large motor things like seed sorters, or running the cutting bar. Crop harvest with a generic low-powered eq that needs minimal human labor.....not so much.
Electrics in planting, watering/fertilizer/pesticides, weed management - that I can forsee.
I'm thinking a solar powered pivot system.
Solar Well in the middle .. elec. for water pump and pivot wheels and pulling tillage equipment .
http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/06/libya-pivot-irrigation/
http://www.dare.co.in/people/featured-innovation/a-pivot-irrigator-with-...
Yair...As posted on other threads we have been working on this concept since 2002. It can be done, we have a small scale machine working here....http://maddelinternational.com/wordpress/?page_id=19....but the periphial velocity provides some interesting problems when you look at scaling up...remember a 250 meter centre pivot moves very slowly,say one revolution in twenty four hours...you probably need to have it doing one revolution every twenty four MINUTES to have any prospect of doing tillage work.
If anyone wants to discuss the issues further (in a sensible way) I would be interested to share some of the knowledge we have accrued from hundreds of hours of testing and many sleepless nights.
I have also done some work on winch systems and believe in years to come there will be a return to cable ploughing and low till cultivation using electric winches on the headlands.
The operator will ride the implement with a hand held remote to start/stop the winding and to advance the winches down the headlands.
The same system could be used for harvesting using ground drive as already mentioned on this thread. Only the grain heads would be collected and the threshing and winnowing would be carried out as is being done with the "back to the future" Canadian Mcloud harvesting system. I don't have the link right now but just put Mcloud harvesting system into Google and you'll find some pages
Jason,
Could you tell me the specs on the combine your friend is using? Perhaps the HP, and the model number if that's convenient?