Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ENERGY EDUCATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PART A-ENERGY SCIENCE AND RESEARCH, cilt.28, sa.2, ss.917-924, 2012 (SCI-Expanded)
Agriculture, as a production-oriented sector, requires energy as an important input to agricultural production. Agriculture uses energy directly as fuel to operate machinery and equipment and indirectly in the fertilizers and chemicals produced off the farm. There has been a continuing growing interest in fossil fuel economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in terms of economic and ecological reasons. A general goal of more energy efficiency encourages the use of tractors with better energy performance in agricultural operations. Tractor manufacturers report that customers are beginning to factor in fuel as part of the tractor-buying equation. Farmers are adding fuel efficiency to their list of purchasing criteria. In this study, an efficiency index, using the specific fuel consumption as a benchmark was applied for classification of agricultural tractors derived from official tests that fallow the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) codes. The survey was based on the results of tests conducted in 2010 by TAMTEST (Agricultural Machinery Test Center of Ministry of Agriculture in Turkey). 55 models of tractors from 12 different tractor brand ranged from 10 kW (13.4 BG) to 119.3 kW (160 BG) sold in Turkish market were taken into account for classification. 18 tractors out of 55 tractors are ranked above the average energy efficiency level. 14 tractor among the 55 tractor are found to be under the average energy efficiency level.