engleski

CO2 reduction potentials in dairy farming sector

Dairy farms today are significant energy consumers in their everyday operations: water heaters, milk coolers, vacuum pumps, lighting, irrigation pumps, fodder dryers, ventilation etc. Dairy farms are a typical SME (small and medium sized enterprise) but the methods and operations used in this research could be applied to all the other SME s concerning energy efficiency and energy management. Usually dairy farmers lack the time, resources and knowledge to effectively address on-farm energy issues. So there is a big opportunity to investigate and bring some new solutions and methods in this field in order to increase energy efficiency awareness among farmers. Also calculation and investigation of energy saving possibilities on an average dairy farm was a significant part of the studies. See the possible savings through modernizing and upgrading the equipment and processes that are already on the farm, by suggesting new solutions and methods. That work was done through energy farm audits, energy calculators and case studies on dairy farms in Croatia but also dairy farms in Europe. The main processes and main energy flows were dismembered. That was the best way to determine energy potentials for each of the energy consumer on a farm. By comparing the present situation with possible improvements we could calculate exact savings for each of the farm section. Final major issue was the possibilities of renewable energy sources implementation on a dairy farm. Biggest attention went to possibilities of a biogas production. Since there isn’ t any biogas production site in Croatia this was quite challenging. A full techno-economic calculation was done for a small biogas plant that the farmers could use in their future biogas plant planning. Other renewable energy potentials were considered depending on the farms size, geographical position etc. (solar systems, biomass, biodiesel production etc.). For every farm section and potential renewable energy source implementation we made detailed calculation and calculators online so the farmers could use it for free and calculate their potential savings and possibilities of introducing renewable energy sources. Our final goal is to have exact measurable savings in kWh per a cow so we could know exactly how much energy, money and CO2 we could save.

Biogas; CO2 reduction; energy efficiency; renewable energy sources

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