Sustainable design and life cycle assessment of an innovative multi-functional haymaking agricultural machinery

The reduction in the use of raw materials and the spread of energy efficient processes and components are necessary from both the economic and the environmental viewpoints. This paper presents the design of an innovative multi-functional agricultural machinery able to integrate three separate traditional implements used for hay raking, hay baling and bale wrapping, i.e. hay rake, round baler and bale wrapper machines, with the aim of speeding up the harvesting operations and reducing both the energy consumption and the global environmental impact. A comparative analysis about the adoption of the traditional implements and the new multi-functional machinery is reported. Particularly, the reduction in both the fuel consumption (-32%), the human labor (-66.7%) is discussed together with a differential environmental analysis of the proposed system and the traditional implements. To meet such a last purpose, the study adopts the life cycle assessment methodology carefully quantifying the impact indicators for three different categories, i.e. human health, ecosysteni quality and resource depletion. The results highlight a global environmental impact reduction of about 35%. The proposed system represents an effective and competitive improvement to ease and speed the haymaking process and to reduce the environmental impact of such a key farmer activity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.