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Agricultural Energy Platforms
 Extension of the Agricultural Energy Platforms: model for usable surfaces and producible powers - The Agricultural Energy Platform project foresees the creation of a company that can handle the management of the energy processing plant and all the related activities, set out below:
Harvesting the final agricultural product, on-site chipping by means of a mobile chipping machine, storage; Energy processing with production of electric energy and heat in the form of hot water; Marketing of both energy products; Potential own consumption for various industrial purposes.
The small standard 7.5 MW electricity plant will require between 7 and 15 employees to operate it and to do harvesting, chipping, transportation and storage work. In defining the Agricultural Energy Platform's potential, the following factors must be taken into account:
Areas of arable land; Plant's energy absorption for a period of one year equivalent to 8,000 hours. A study of the specific territory; Identifying the most apt technological, economic and commercial "system"; Combining the different agricultural and industrial components into a single investment organization.
 Ligneous Fuels - Chippings - They are chips and bits, 2-5 cm in length and a few mm thick, obtained by chipping wood. Chippings are a “flowing” and uniform material and are therefore particularly suitable for feeding heating plants automatically. Also, chippings are often made from scrap or defective wood, as well as branches, pruning residues, and there is therefore a 15-20% recovery increase in material when compared to conventional forestry utilization. Ease of transportation should also be taken into account because, in fact, although the same weight of chippings occupies a greater volume than round wood, their apparent volume is far lower than that of branches as such: a ton of fresh chippings occupies approximately three cubic meters while at least ten are required to contain the same amount of branches. Freshly produced chippings have a relatively high humidity level (approximately 50%), thus, to avoid fermentation phenomena and therefore significant losses in weight (over 20%), they must be stored under a roof without walls or with perforated walls, so as to facilitate their natural drying process and stability, which takes about two months, when the material reaches 30-35% humidity.
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