Evaluation of physical–mechanical properties of herbaceous bioenergy plants

This paper provides the results of the tests on bioenergy plants—topinambours and sunflowers, their cultivation and usage for fuels. Previous investigations show that stalks of topinambours, grown in fertile soil and fertilised, can reach up to 4 m height and give up to 15 t dry matter (D.M.) ha−1 of the green mass, sunflowers—3 m and 11 tD.M. ha−1, respectively. Effective way to minimise the moisture of energy plants is to keep them harvested in the storage. The stems of the topinambours cut in autumn reaches 20% moisture content in 11 days, the sunflowers—in a month. Physical–mechanical characteristics of chopped stems—angles of fall and natural crumble, is important for construction of stores of chopped mass. These angles of large-stalked plants, chopped by forage combines E-281C and Krone-Big varied marginally: angle of fall—from 74° to 82°, angle of natural crumble—from 45° to 47°. There were investigations on main physical–mechanical characteristics of chopping quality of bioenergy plants. Chopping quality of topinambours and sunflowers, chopped by the stationary fodder chopper SPP-1 was sufficient high, and we recommend this chopper to chop the bioenergy plants. Experimental data of chopping quality of combines E-281C and Krone-Big show, that the amount of dust, which was large enough (8.6–12.5%) was affected by stalks were chopped with leafs during trials. According to the fineness requirements for fuel-chaff, stalks were chopped in good quality, despite large amount of dustVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij