¦ADVANCED BIOFUELS AND CHEMICALS DEPARTMENT
Imagination for Mechanization Armed with a history of innovation in agricultural equipment, New Holland is poised to play a significant role in the expanding biomass industry. BY ANNA SIMET
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hen the world’s largest biomass-fueled power plant, the E.On station in Lockerbie, Scotland, receives its chopped willow coppice fuel on site, it has been efficiently harvested and prepared by a New Holland FR9080. With productivity maximization in mind, the team at New Holland designed its FB130 willow header to double harvesting acreage achieved by existing market models, enabling yields of up to 10.2 metric tons of dry matter per hectare. In Northern Italy’s Turin, at the La Bellotta farm, a second generation NH2 hydrogen-powered tractor is utilized in the field. While fueled with hydrogen, a 1-MW onsite biogas plant produced the
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methane that was converted into fuel to power the machine. In Guragon, near Delhi, India, A2Z Maintenance & Engineering is currently operating a fleet of 105 New Holland tractors, 45 conventional balers, 15 rakes and two mowers. At this operation, waste left in paddy, cotton, corn and oilseed rape fields is harvested—rather than burned in the field—for production of 45 MW of electricity at three separate biomass power projects in the Punjab region. And in Brazil, New Holland has partnered with Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira, or the Sugar Cane Technology Center, to utilize a whole range of New Holland equipment—tractors, windrowers, large square balers and bale accumulators—to bale sugar cane straw at two