Wanted: a new method of ensilage.

Here's a system concept. 100 acre indoor herd. 5 acres in solar panels, producing 5mwh per day(will they do this in ireland).
This will provide enough power to dry 4 to 5 acres a day.
A battery powered robot, with a 1mwh battery pack. 3m wide double knife mower on front feeding a belt conveyor that is lined with piezoelectric transducers for drying. The machine is mounted on tracks and will cut dry and collect the hay automatically in the field. It'll travel at 1km/hr and cut dry and collect 1 ton of hay every 1.5hrs.
 
Here's a system concept. 100 acre indoor herd. 5 acres in solar panels, producing 5mwh per day(will they do this in ireland).
This will provide enough power to dry 4 to 5 acres a day.
A battery powered robot, with a 1mwh battery pack. 3m wide double knife mower on front feeding a belt conveyor that is lined with piezoelectric transducers for drying. The machine is mounted on tracks and will cut dry and collect the hay automatically in the field. It'll travel at 1km/hr and cut dry and collect 1 ton of hay every 1.5hrs.
I've done my maths wrong on the solar panels. Dear god but they are useless investments lol.
 
Some pretty exciting breakthroughs in drying technology in the last few years.
Ultrasonic drying it's called, it doesn't require heat but rather shakes water out of material. Done a bit of reading on it yesterday, it uses similar set ups to a humidifier, which can create cold steam.
There has been commercial implementation in using it along with convection or warm air drying where they blast the material with the ultrasonic waves, but it's most efficient in direct contact set ups where the material is on the vibrating surface.
Up to 5 times more energy efficient than warm air drying and twice as fast.
Well what's the catch?
You get 10kwh of energy in a litre of oil, which can be used pretty much at 100% efficiency in producing warm air, but only 30ish% in producing electrical energy, so if you are using a diesel generator to supply the power for the system your benefit is marginal compared to just burning the diesel. And even in a stationary setup the price of electricity compared to oil still leaves it very expensive.
At the minute they can dry out 8kgs of water for every kwh of electricity, this could improve again but I'm not sure by how much, anyway if we are talking fresh grass to hay that's 6000kgs of water that needs removed so that's 750kwh per ton of dry matter at idk 12c/kwh? 90 euro a ton for dry hay any day of the year. That's not low enough yet but it's still a remarkable reduction in energy cost. Even with a little natural wilt say to 25% we could reduce that cost to 50 euro a ton.
Coupled with macerator mat technology on a good day you'd have hay for 35 euro a ton the same day you mowed it.
we call ours a tedder
 
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Here's a system concept. 100 acre indoor herd. 5 acres in solar panels, producing 5mwh per day(will they do this in ireland).
This will provide enough power to dry 4 to 5 acres a day.
A battery powered robot, with a 1mwh battery pack. 3m wide double knife mower on front feeding a belt conveyor that is lined with piezoelectric transducers for drying. The machine is mounted on tracks and will cut dry and collect the hay automatically in the field. It'll travel at 1km/hr and cut dry and collect 1 ton of hay every 1.5hrs.
Would you not be feeding fresh grass as often as possible and only making hay for storage.
 
Some pretty exciting breakthroughs in drying technology in the last few years.
Ultrasonic drying it's called, it doesn't require heat but rather shakes water out of material. Done a bit of reading on it yesterday, it uses similar set ups to a humidifier, which can create cold steam.
There has been commercial implementation in using it along with convection or warm air drying where they blast the material with the ultrasonic waves, but it's most efficient in direct contact set ups where the material is on the vibrating surface.
Up to 5 times more energy efficient than warm air drying and twice as fast.
Well what's the catch?
You get 10kwh of energy in a litre of oil, which can be used pretty much at 100% efficiency in producing warm air, but only 30ish% in producing electrical energy, so if you are using a diesel generator to supply the power for the system your benefit is marginal compared to just burning the diesel. And even in a stationary setup the price of electricity compared to oil still leaves it very expensive.
At the minute they can dry out 8kgs of water for every kwh of electricity, this could improve again but I'm not sure by how much, anyway if we are talking fresh grass to hay that's 6000kgs of water that needs removed so that's 750kwh per ton of dry matter at idk 12c/kwh? 90 euro a ton for dry hay any day of the year. That's not low enough yet but it's still a remarkable reduction in energy cost. Even with a little natural wilt say to 25% we could reduce that cost to 50 euro a ton.
Coupled with macerator mat technology on a good day you'd have hay for 35 euro a ton the same day you mowed it.
With the generator you could harvest the heat to boost the process efficiency I guess? I know heat isn't needed but can only help(?)

Ultrasound has a lot of potential.
I remember reading about an ultrasound sub soiler, it literally shook the earth beneath, using ultra sonic waves, to crack it up! Only wearing part was a skid that dragged along the surface. Was going to be a game changer in arid hard soils. Could travel fast and be a huge width too.
It was in 'The Furrow' John Deeres magazine. Never seen another thing about it.
 
Here's a system concept. 100 acre indoor herd. 5 acres in solar panels, producing 5mwh per day(will they do this in ireland).
This will provide enough power to dry 4 to 5 acres a day.
A battery powered robot, with a 1mwh battery pack. 3m wide double knife mower on front feeding a belt conveyor that is lined with piezoelectric transducers for drying. The machine is mounted on tracks and will cut dry and collect the hay automatically in the field. It'll travel at 1km/hr and cut dry and collect 1 ton of hay every 1.5hrs.
Are you still getting abducted by aliens or has all that stopped with the lockdown
 
With the generator you could harvest the heat to boost the process efficiency I guess? I know heat isn't needed but can only help(?)

Ultrasound has a lot of potential.
I remember reading about an ultrasound sub soiler, it literally shook the earth beneath, using ultra sonic waves, to crack it up! Only wearing part was a skid that dragged along the surface. Was going to be a game changer in arid hard soils. Could travel fast and be a huge width too.
It was in 'The Furrow' John Deeres magazine. Never seen another thing about it.
Was it the April 1st edition?
 
The only thing about the hay would be consistency no reason not to do both if you wish.
Maybe the sunniest days when the solar panels are working to full capacity you could bring in enough dry and store for a few days.. instead of making hay could be just consistently have it at say 40dm
 
Maybe the sunniest days when the solar panels are working to full capacity you could bring in enough dry and store for a few days.. instead of making hay could be just consistently have it at say 40dm
Well the solar panels seemed grand but I mistook a hectare for an acre n well I don't see how solar panels pay anyone lol. I've described the problems and costs earlier in the thread. Personally I'd rather have hay than 40dm silage. Depending on the weather you could use a macerator mat maker to reduce the moisture down to 50-60%dm or even more in a day. Only having a ton of water via ultrasonic drying to remove to make hay. About 15 euro a ton of hay in energy required. When you consider wrapping a bale costs about 2-3 euro and a ton of hay is equal to 3 to 4 bales of silage its not outside the realm of possibility.
 
Maybe the sunniest days when the solar panels are working to full capacity you could bring in enough dry and store for a few days.. instead of making hay could be just consistently have it at say 40dm
Do you mean only to artifically dry it to 40%dm or wilt it in the field?
 
Artificially its consistent then
Only thing is it'll take 2 thirds of the energy required to make hay to dry it to 40%dm. There may be some nuance in it as it takes less energy initially but I'm not sure on how much that is.
It's kinda interesting because I'm going off figures from different applications, for hay we'd be looking for a reduction from 85% moisture to 15% but in clothes it's about 40% to as dry as possible, it was very effective in fruit drying but that was again from 85% all the way down to 1% moisture, and the dryer things get the harder it is to dry. So until its actually done with grass and the drying rate/power requirement is mapped out over the drying period its hard to know. But a good assumption from the fruit and clothes drying experiments is that initial drying is very quick and energy efficient.
 
I remember the mesh kicking about in the late 70s,my dad used them to store brewers grains,I remember him saying it was lined with paper.
They ended up using the mesh to make a false floor in the barn and blew underneath with the barn hay drier.
Was some here too lined with hesson sacking as grain bins
 
I can remember one being filled by the combine in the field at home and the grain was then collected from there by the merchant, they used an auger to fill the trailers
I still have one of the hydraulic 6inch diameter augers that were powered by the lorries hauling the grain away, also a few of the rolls of mesh that made up the grain bins. Must be from the mid 80s I’d say.
 
I still have one of the hydraulic 6inch diameter augers that were powered by the lorries hauling the grain away, also a few of the rolls of mesh that made up the grain bins. Must be from the mid 80s I’d say.
The mesh and the sacking are still at home, and a hydraulic auger, I'd say it's only 3 or 4 inch though.
 
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