Combine harvester | EPFL Graph Search

The modern combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine designed to harvest a variety of grain crops. The name derives from its combining four separate harvesting operations—reaping, threshing, gathering, and winnowing—to a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, millet, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers and rapeseed. The separated straw, left lying on the field, comprises the stems and any remaining leaves of the crop with limited nutrients left in it: the straw is then either chopped, spread on the field and ploughed back in or baled for bedding and limited-feed for livestock. Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labour-saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population engaged in agriculture. In 1826 in Scotland, the inventor Reverend Patrick Bell designed a reaper machine, which used the scissors principle of plant cutting (a principle that is used to this day). The Bell machine was pushed by horses. A few Bell machines were available in the United States. In 1835, in the United States, Hiram Moore built and patented the first combine harvester, which was capable of reaping, threshing and winnowing cereal grain. Early versions were pulled by horse, mule or ox teams. In 1835, Moore built a full-scale version with a length of 5.2 m (17 ft) and a cut width of 4.57 m (15 ft); by 1839, over of crops were harvested. This combine harvester was pulled by 20 horses fully handled by farmhands. By 1860, combine harvesters with a cutting, or swathe, width of several metres were used on American farms. A parallel development in Australia saw the development of the stripper based on the Gallic stripper, by John Ridley and others in South Australia by 1843. The stripper only gathered the heads, leaving the stems in the field. The stripper and later headers had the advantage of fewer moving parts and only collecting heads, requiring less power to operate.

Design, Synthesis and Characterization of New Nanoparticle Stabilizers and Their Application in Catalysis

Ilaria Biondi

In recent years, a strong emphasis in research towards creating sustainable and environmental friendly chemical processes has propelled the development of novel types of catalytic systems that combine advantages from homogeneous and heterogeneous processes. In this respect, transition metal based nanoparticles, TM-NPs, are excellent candidates with properties that offer high efficiency, high selectivity and the possibility of recycling. However, due to the particularly small size, within the nanoscale, TM-NPs are generally only kinetically stable and must be supported or stabilized by molecular systems to prevent aggregation into larger, less active materials. The work presented herein concerns the design, synthesis, characterisation and the applications of new TM-NP protecting agents, which are based on polymers functionalized with components that compose ionic liquids, P-ILs. Specifically, these P-ILs feature a hydrophobic poly-norbornene framework prepared using Ring Opening Metathesis Polymerization, ROMP, with pendant imidazolium-based ionic liquid substituents that allow fine tuning of the polymer solubility by anion-exchange. In Chapter 2, an aqueous, soluble P-IL containing the 1,2-dimethylimidazolium methane-sulphonate substituent and its use in the synthesis of aqueous gold NP, GNP, solutions is described. These particular TM-NPs were characterized by UV-VIS spectroscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy, TEM. Subsequently, the P-IL/GNP solutions were used to catalyse the reduction of p-nitrophenol and the hydrogenation of cinnamaldehyde, both reactions are found to exhibit excellent activity under mild conditions. In Chapter 3, the potential of aqueous P-IL stabilizers to transfer GNPs from water to hydrophobic ILs and organic solvents is demonstrated. Using an anion-exchange process, the phase change does not result in GNP aggregation, as confirmed by UV-VIS spectroscopy and TEM analysis. Moreover, the same P-ILs were used as a protecting agents for the synthesis of aqueous rhodium NPs, RhNPs, which have been applied in the catalytic hydrogenation of natural compounds, including limonene, cinnamaldehyde, citral and α- and β-ionones. Through anion-exchange, the aqueous P-IL stabilized RhNPs are readily transferred into hydrophobic ILs, then used as catalysts in the hydrogenation of styrene and limonene. The stabilized RhNPs exhibited good activity, even after recycling. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, XPS, analysis demonstrated conclusively that the anion exchange and phase transfer of the Rh/Au-NP-IL system. In Chapter 4, three P-ILs containing poly-oxy linker groups, strategically placed between the poly-norbornene framework and the ionic groups, are described. The linkers provide additional stabilization through steric stabilization and coordination via the ether functional groups. These P-ILs were used to stabilize aqueous GNPs, which were characterized by UV-VIS spectroscopy and TEM. Their application in the reduction of p-nitrophenol reduction was demonstrated. Preliminary studies on the stabilization mode of PILs shown that the polymers, despite the presence of ionic groups, can stabilize electrostatically stabilized aqueous GNPs which otherwise aggregate in presence of water soluble imidazolium-based ILs. Moreover, they display good efficiency in terms of steric stabilization, comparable to systems featuring the poly-vinylpyrrolidone, PVP.

EPFL2011

Modelling pesticides residues

Raphael Charles

This work is a contribution to the development of a specific method to assess the presence of residues in agricultural commodities. The following objectives are formulated: to identify and describe main processes in environment — plant exchanges, to build of a model to assess the residue concentration at harvest in agricultural commodities, to understand the functioning of the modelled system, to characterise pesticides used in field crops and identify optimisation potentials in phytosanitary measures. The frame for the methodological developments corresponds to the procedure for the evaluation of the toxicity provided for the Life Cycle Impact Assessment methodology and for the method Impact 2002+. In chapter 2, the methodological procedure for the assessment of human toxicity potential is introduced. First the factors of fate and exposure are described, including the notion of harvest fraction, the amount of substance found in harvest per unit of substance emitted initially in the system, the main result of the present study. Then the effect factors and the framework for impact evaluation are introduced. Chapter 3 describes the principles accounted for the building of the fate model. Wheat crop and a restricted list of substances are chosen for these methodological developments. The model is composed by compartments describing the environment and the plant. Its functioning is based on initial amounts of substance in the source compartments, on transfer rates linking the compartments and on a dynamic evolution as a function of time between the treatment and the harvest. Air, soil and formulation deposit on plant are the primer compartments receiving the treated substance. Each transport is described by a transfer rate accounting for the process and for the equilibrium partitioning between the two exchanging compartments. Degradation of substance and plant growth are additional processes considered. Each compartment is described by a linear differential equation for the variation of mass accumulating and dissipating. Their assembly builds the model solved as a function of time. This exact resolution is complemented by additional tools to better understand the system functioning and to provide further approximations of the results: the system is simplified into subsystems describing the source and the receiving plant compartment and analytically solved using interpretable equations. Chapter 4 describes and discusses all transport and dissipation processes determining the fate of the substance in the limits of the system. The recent publications concerning the understanding and the modelling of pesticide transfer from formulation deposit on plant through the cuticular membranes give new possibilities to model pesticide fate and to better account for the direct applications on the plant. In chapter 5, the core model is first applied and its functioning analysed. The low availability and partly unsatisfying quality of data for pesticides description is a main complication for the methodology application: the lack of data for the half-life of the substance in the plant especially leads to a strong extrapolation for this determinant factor. A large difference is observed between early and late applied pesticides with respectively a major release to soil or a release to formulation deposit on plant surface. The initial transport processes quickly distribute the substance in the system. Once each plant compartment has accumulated residues up to a maximum amount, a dissipation phase occurs. The duration of these periods is determinant for the level of residue in harvest. The soil is a determinant source for long term evolutions of the system, for soon applied substances with low degradation rate. The half-life of substance deposited on plant is equal to a few days, but the transfer is fast from formulation deposit to the inner plant, where degradation is generally much slower. The accumulation of substance from the air is mostly negligible. The sum of the subsystems gives an approximation of the total system, useful for interpretation. The possibility to simplify the subsystem by ignoring the transfer back from receiving to the source compartment underlines the low contribution of these transfers in the functioning of the model. An approximated resolution is based on the determination of the maximum accumulated substance and on the subsequent dissipation process. However, an important loss of precision is observed. This approximation is useful for interpretation and for extrapolations. In chapter 6, an evaluation of the model is conducted through a sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. The sensitivity analysis consists of evaluating the effect on the output of a change in an input, on the basis of three complementary approaches: the effect of a fixed change in the input of e.g. 0.1%, the effect of a change specific to the uncertainty of the input and the effect of a change in input value from a minimum to a maximum. The uncertainty of an output is evaluated according to the relative contribution of the confidence factors of the inputs. Results show that the half-lives and the time are the most important factors determining the sensitivity of the system and the propagation of uncertainty. The contribution of the half-life to the confidence factor of the harvest fraction reaches between 30% to 98% of the total uncertainty. The confidence factors of results increase exponentially with the time interval between application and harvest. The role of partition coefficients to the behaviour of substances is highly variable, may be determinant or negligible, with increasing or limiting effect on mobility. Sensitivity and uncertainty for parameters describing the agricultural or environmental system are very variable, but sometimes determinant and so confirmed as essential for the system functioning. Consequently, differences in harvest fractions between substances are only significant if they are high. A first comparison of the computed results with measures of residues obtained by an experiment and with references such as tolerance values lead to a pertinent verification of the overall methodology. Finally, the qualitative comparison with other models underlines the specificities and the originality of the present methodology in particular by comparison with environmental multi-media models running in steady state. In chapter 7, the model is finally applied for an ultimate interpretation. The harvest fractions for more than 100 substances are evaluated. Among all types of substances, low and high levels of residues per treatment are found, representative for the high variability of harvest fractions from 5E-16 for bromoxynil to 7E-03 for tebuconazole sprayed on wheat. The fate process represents the highest source of variation for the toxicity. If the application rate does not explain the high differences in residue level at harvest, the time of application may represent an optimisation potential particularly for late treatments. However, the toxicity needs to account for both fate and effect factors, as only their combination effectively allows to evaluate the toxicity. According to the available list of Human Damage Factors per treatment, problematic substances may be effectively identified and substituted. In chapter 8 answers to questions brought with the objectives bring a conclusion to the study. The appendices include notably the results of harvest fractions and toxicity per unit substance applied, per treatment and per unit cultivated crop area, for the main substances and field crops. A LCA is also presented on the intensity level of wheat production.

EPFL2004