ENERGY TRANSITION ▶▶▶
still too expensive. “A battery will cost roughly € 100/kWh by 2030,” he states. “If you want to use 100 kW for four hours, you will need a battery costing € 40,000.” As tractors and self-propelled machinery are left unused for long periods after seasonal work, this becomes an expensive business. “By itself, agriculture is indeed a very poor business case for electric power. One idea could be to make batteries exchangeable, as is the case with hand tools.” The researcher expects battery size to have re- duced by half within 10 to 15 years, so integra- tion issues will have become a thing of the past. ” Perhaps lithium-air batteries will have moved beyond the experimental stage in 10 to 15 years’ time. They are actually extremely light and small, but it’s still difficult to tell what will happen.” Mr Hoekstra expects charging time to reduce by half over the next ten years.
Gas is within reach Tjörven Van de Velde from Case IH, on the oth- er hand, sees a future for engines that run on gas. “Methane will increase rapidly in popula- rity over the next five years. FPT, for example, has just such an engine ready, and whole fleets of them are being used in goods vehicles. That step is also more attainable. The tractor stays the same, and you have your own methane tank with you out in the field.” Many believe hydrogen technology to be still far too underdeveloped and more suited to use later down the line. While hydrogen shows some potential, because relatively large quan- tities of energy can be stored compactly, the process of converting to and from hydrogen is still quite inefficient. In addition, all the safety aspects are still not adequately guaranteed. New Holland, in particular, became well- known for its NH2 experiment involving a trac- tor running on hydrogen, before switching its attention to methane via two trial models. Methane has since been the subject of much experimentation by tractor manufacturers, and Steyr, Valtra and New Holland have already demonstrated their results. Massey Ferguson also recently revealed its blueprint for a meth- ane tractor. Van de Velde knows why the meth- ane engine did not catch on earlier. “It was rel- atively easy to make diesel engines conform to the earlier emissions standards from Stage II and III onwards. What’s more, Stage VI involved heavy subsidies, so there was little incentive
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The Fendt E100 Vario runs for up to five hours on a single battery charge, with power of 50kW. The battery is a 650V high-capacity lithium-ion battery of 100kWh, which can be charged to 80% in 40 minutes.
and interest in switching to alternatives such as methane. I think that is now set to change, though. There are many subsidies available for renewable energy.”
Gas engine with torque The downside of gas engines is that they have little torque at the bottom, so power delivery is poor. Diesel engines that can switch to gas once again suffer from methane sludge in the cylinders when switching, which results in low- er efficiency. This is the case with CNG (com- pressed natural gas) and LNG (liquefied natural gas) engines. LPG (common in passenger
vehicles) is rather a liquid mixture of gases and not used in tractors. The tank pressure for CNG of 200 bar is much higher than the 7.5 bar of LPG, so an LPG vehicle cannot use CNG. Mechanisation company RosierGreidanus has been working together with Holland Diesel Maassluis to devise a solution to overcome methane sludge and poor power delivery in these gas engines. Their Clean Engine Technol- ogy (CET) replaces the conventional choke in diesel engines, enabling tractors, loaders and cranes to run far more efficiently and cleanly on gas. Using Biogas can reduce CO2
emissions
Not only tractors but also machines are becoming electrically powered. The Agricul- tural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF) established a standard for electrical power similar to what was created for ISOBUS.
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 1 November 2018
by up to 85%. Compared with standard diesel engines, gas engines produce minimal emis- sions of NOx and fine particulate, and as much as 65% less than a Stage V-compliant diesel engine, manufacturers claim. “Thanks to a higher torque, consumption using CET is around 14% lower,” says Siebren Greidanus from RosierGreidanus. “What’s more, the obvi- ous advantage for agriculture is that methane is already available on the farm as a residual product. The closure of the loop therefore gives methane engines an advantage over other energy sources.” It is not clear when the technology will introduced for the first time. Siebren Greidanus hopes to announce more details by the end of the year.
PHOTO: FRITS HUIDEN
PHOTO: FENDT
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