Improving energy efficiency of biotechnical agricultural systems – scientific and organisational Issues
¹Saint-Petersburg state Agrarian University, Pushkin-1, Box No 1, RU196600 St.-Petersburg, Russia
²Tallinn University of Technology Tartu College, Puiestee 78, EE 51008 Tartu, Estonia *Correspondence: toivokabanen@hot.ee
Abstract:
The production process of an agricultural and industrial complex (AIC) includes processing of big areas of fertile soil that receive sun-generated electromagnetic energy. This is one of the peculiarities of the AIC, determined by the fact that the AIC produces primary (plant-based) food. The plants use part of the sun-generated energy to synthesise biological energy, which forms the nutrition value of the product and which is measured by a rational (relative) factor per unit of area. A plant community is a biological system where each plant is a biological element. The amount of fuel energy (which is anthropogenic unlike sun-generated energy) consumed by an AIC company to produce plant-based food is determined by the energy efficiency of the technical elements (fuel cells, both mobile and immobile) included in the consumer energy system (CES).Crops also supply food for livestock farming, which is the second biological branch of AIC and produces the second type of food, meat and poultry. Animals and poultry are raised using daily feed flow as the source of energy. As the energy consumption and the energy efficiency (expenses and return on investment, respectively) are determined by the technical part of the consumer energy system, it is necessary to find the dependence between the CES and biological systems (crop farming and animal farming) in the food production process.
Key words:
consumer power system, criteria of energy efficiency, energy saving, power consumption of production