Design and Evaluation of a Versatile Woody Biomass Harvester-Baler

摘要

In 2005-2006, a willow harvester was developed with a 1.97-m wide four-saw cutter and a 1.55-m rotary shredder placed in front of an agricultural baler. The header worked well in level plantations and left a clean-cut stump. However, it was not designed to operate on uneven land where rocks and soil might cause saw blade malfunction. For this reason, a more robust header was developed in 2007 to harvest natural brushes on fallow land. The new header was a 2.30-m wide flail shredder that both cut andconditioned the woody brush before ejecting it into the baler. It was evaluated in two field trials in eastern Canada. On a fallow and poorly drained land, the shredder header-baler harvested natural alder shrubs at an average rate of 4 t wet matter (WM)/h. In a level willow plantation, the shredder header-baler worked up to 121 WM/h, compared to 81 WM/h with the original four-saw header-baler. The bales typically weighed 400 kg, were 1.4 m in diameter (1.2 m wide), and had a wet density of 220 kg/m~3 (50% moisture). The new shredder baler offers a versatile alternative to harvest either wild brushes or planted woody crops. The technology will be helpful for land management and to provide a new source of otherwise neglected biomass.