This project focused on the planning and on-site-verification of rice straw collection and transportation using agricultural machinery; the model and cost analyses were also conducted. The results would help to improve the existing operations and to reduce the costs; and it would provide the useful information to the environmental protection and agriculture related government authorities for their references. Small and large round bales were the objects of study. The working capacities for small and large balers were 2 and 4 tons per hour respectively. Operation procedures to collect and transport small rice-straw bales were investigated, and concluded as the following four steps: (1) baling machine specially designed for rice straw was used to pack small round bales, (2) the bales were stacked by operators on the farm, (3) hydraulic device was used to pick up bales into trucks, and (4) trucks were used to transport bales to the destination for further treatments. Operation procedures of large rice-straw bales were (1) a gathering machine was adopted to flip and gather up rice straw in the field, (2) large round bales were packed by a hay baler, (3) hydraulic caterpillar was used to collect bales in the field, (4) large bales were then picked up and moved into trucks, and (5) trucks were used to transport bales to the designated destination. In this study, the experiments regarding the performance of balers due to rice straws with different moisture contents were conducted. The results indicated that both types of balers were successful in making small and large bales at moisture content ranged from 11 to 19% (wet basis). The costs of entire rice straw packing processes included (1) purchase cost of rice straw, (2) field operations and (3) transportation (60 km). The costs of rice-straw small bales for above mentioned three sub-categories were analyzed, and they were 700, 1085 and 176 NT$ per ton of rice straw respectively. The results of cost analysis for rice-straw large bales were 700, 695 and 117 NT$ per ton. The results indicated that the cost for making large bales was less due to higher working capacities of hay baler, while breakdown rate was the drawback.

Agricultural Waste、Rice Straw、Collection model