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The rationalization of working procedures during difficult market conditions is gaining increasing importance. For rational production, it is necessary to always be aware of what and how much to invest in the business process to obtain the desired products or services without economic loss. This article presents a tool for the assessment of costs in forest wood supply chains. WoodChainManager is a Web-based tool composed of three user modules intended for the assessment of material costs of individual machines or the total costs of all selected machines in a forest harvesting system. Users can test the impact of individual technologies on the total material costs of the harvesting system and thus optimize operation processes. The basic tool for describing harvesting systems is the matrix, which visualizes cutting and hauling from the standing tree in the stand to the forest products at the end user. The tool has built-in algorithms that prevent the selection of an illogical harvesting system. The selected method for calculating costs for individual machines is simple, but still reflects the state of the actually incurred costs. WoodChainManager offers cost calculations for a wide range of technologies, machines and appurtenant attachments. The authors of this paper wish to increase awareness and understanding of cost calculations and to offer the possibility to directly compare different harvesting systems.

While modern fully mechanized ground-based systems are a default option for safe and productive harvesting, they have always been limited by terrain factors such as slope, soil strength, and roughn...

Pruning residues could represent an important biomass resources for energy production.Only in Italy it has been estimated that an annual quantity of biomass of over 2600 kt of dry matter could be obtained from olive residues. Several machines developed for pruning harvesting are available in the market, most of which are tractor-driven, while limited knowledge is available onperformance, quality of work and costs of harvesting logistics based on stationary chippers. The aim of the present paper is to analyze machine performance of a forestry stationary chipper applied to pruning harvesting for what concerns work productivity, quality of the comminuted product and harvesting operating costs. This system is actually applied by Fiusis Company, an Italian enterprise which manages a biomass power plant exclusively powered by olive trees’ pruning residues, and it has never been analyzed in literature. The results obtained showed consistent work productivity,which resulted the highest ever found in olive pruning harvesting systems and equal to 5.23 tdm h-1. This high work productivity allowed also to obtain a little economic gain from a matter,which is actually considered a problem for olive groves’ owners and not a potential source of income.In particular, the use of a stationary chipper seemed very efficient in olive groves with a consistentamount of wooden residues to be processed and with big branches not harvestable by the most common towed pruning harvester. In addition, the stationary chipper has the advantage of avoiding the preliminary raking operation, which results in reduced costs for the farmer.

Plantation forests are established, and expanding, to satisfy increasing global demand for timber products. Shifting societal values, such as safety, productivity, environmental, quality and social are influencing the plantation forestry sector. This is primarily driven through an ever increasing world population, which in turn influences the way nations view the value systems by which they live. More people require more resources—also forest products. Also, the availability of information is influencing the pace of technological development. These changes could result in a difference in the management of plantations that could affect the forest engineering systems of the future. This review aimed to summarize the current status of plantation forests; summarize future developments and possible scenarios in forest plantation management for the various products; and assess whether these developments in a plantation environment could affect the harvesting systems used. Factors influencing the form of plantations include the type and nature of the plantation owner; the change in demand for different and new forest products; climate change factors, including the use of biomass for energy, carbon sequestration and trading; ecosystem services and other products and services; and sustainability certification of forest management. The impact and influence of these factors were summarised into a series of key drivers that will influence the technology used in harvesting machines, as well as the choice of harvesting machines, systems and methods. These drivers were the effect of variations in tree size, the expansion of plantation areas onto more difficult terrain, diversity in plantation design, increased attention towards site impacts and the increased use of biomass for energy. Specific information is provided regarding how the harvesting systems could be affected.

This paper presents the design of a harvesting system suited to power supply electronic equipment hosted in a marine buoy for harbor monitoring purposes. The system exploits both wave motion converters and photovoltaic panels to either charge a back-up battery or directly supply the loads. The system has a double stage topology, the first stage is devoted to the tracking of the maximum power point while the second stage manages the energy flow towards battery and loads. The design is made in the LTspice environment by adopting proper models for the state of charge (SOC) of the battery.

WOS: 000365525900060, We present the design, characterization, theoretical and experimental verification of a tunable perfect metamaterial absorber (MA) based electromagnetic (EM) energy harvesting and sensor application. We have used the golden ratio while determining the dimensions allowing a simple configuration and an easy fabrication for the proposed structure. We have examined and analyzed the perfect absorption (both numerically and experimentally) and EM energy harvesting (numerically) behaviors of the proposed structure in order to verify and show the characteristics of the model. It is shown that 99.9 % maximum absorption rate is achieved at 6.78 GHz, and MA structure can be used as an EM energy collector. In order to support the numerical study, an experimental study is realized. We have then developed a sensor application of the proposed MA structure and observed the effects of the harvesting system. Perfect MA sensor based EM energy harvesting system is successfully achieved.

The giant reed is a herbaceous energy crop that demonstrates a good adaptability for areas of central-northern Italy. However, its size and stem resistance to cutting pose problems for harvesting in relation both to the availability of suitable machinery and costs of the operation. A technical and economic evaluation has been conducted of a harvesting system based on an experimental machine, the biotriturator, developed by University of Bologna in collaboration with the Nobili Company (Bologna, Italy) and adapted to field operating conditions. The harvesting system consists of cutting-shredding and baling in a single pass. The system was evaluated by performing a winter harvest when the crop was in quiescence and had a low moisture content. The total harvesting costs were evaluated as 11.6 € Mg-1 dry biomass. Given that the estimated area that can be covered by the harvesting system was 123 hectares per year the system represents an effective solution for not very large areas and is therefore suitable for the Italian environment where average farm sizes are slightly over seven hectares (ISTAT, 2011).