Viabilidade operacional do uso da energia elétrica como fonte de potência em tratores agrícolas

Abstract

The economic and environmental issues of more than a century of intense use of fuel derivative of oil have been forcing a constant quest for alternative sources of energy, either in urban or in agricultural areas. This work was performed aiming to assess the operational viability of use of electricity as source of power for agricultural tractors. Was carried out the comparison of performance curves between an internal combustion engine used on agricultural tractors and an electrical engine. The performance of the electrical engine was considered in the proposal for theoretical configuration of the electrical tractor. This proposal was assessed in relation to autonomy in different power demands, and was also compared with a conventional agricultural tractor, in relation to operating energy cost and energy efficiency. A model of electric agricultural tractor was also built in reduced scale, which was tested for traction in order to determine its operating energy cost and autonomy. The electrical engine showed best results for torque, power, energy efficiency, and operating energy cost. The autonomy of theoretical configuration was greater than eight hours a day, for mean and low power, by working at lower rotations. The performance of traction bar of small-scale model was compatible to conventional tractors plus values of autonomy greater than eight hours a day for up to 59% of power demand. The operating energy cost of the scale model was up to 89% less than the cost of conventional tractors. Based on these results, we conclude that the use of electricity as source of power on agricultural tractors is viable in terms of cost and energy efficiency, and is a potential for intensification of researches in this working field.