The authors evaluated the emission rate of ammonia from swine manure (C_A) which was varied by water content. The emitted volume of ammonia from swine manure was measured after exposed to air at temperatures 20°C, 30°C and 40°C. C_A was evaluated from the ratio between this measurement and evaluated ammonia volume when substitute C_A.=1 for equation in summary of previous paper.
As a result, C_A is correlated to water content of swine manure and environmental temperature. As the emitted ammonia volume in swine house was possible to estimate from using mass transfer coefficient of ammonia from swine manure and C_A.

View full abstract

Wind tunnel testing was carried out to investigate the effect of a tall country elevator on the wind environment of neighboring greenhouses. The results showed that greater negative pressure was found on the surfaces of the closer greenhouses to the country elevator when the greenhouses were located to the leeward of the country elevator. The distribution of wind velocity at a height of 4m showed that the velocity was increased in the area up to the closer three greenhouses to the country elevator at a wind direction of WSW. The installation of wind breaks, with a height of 2m to 3m located between the country elevator and the greenhouses, was investigated. It was found that such low wind breaks showed no significant improvement of wind environment. On the other hand, the distance between the country elevator and the greenhouses was more effective. The results suggest that a distance greater than three times the height of a country elevator is necessary in order to neglect the effect of the county elevator.

View full abstract

In vacuum cooling, vegetables like a Japanese redish can hardly be cooled. Although it is thought that the pre-cooling method like hydro-cooling is the best for a Japanese radish, almost all hydro-cooling is not performed in Japan.
Then, it aimed at development of the method of adding a small improvement to the present vacuum cooling method, and cooling Japanese radish efficiently in this research.
That is, the pre-wetting processing method for performing vacuum cooling effectively, its cooling effect, and the cooling characteristic to the thickness and the cooling time of a Japanese radish were examined.
Consequently, when carrying out vacuum cooling using the paper dishcloth which contained moisture in packing material, it became clear that sufficient cooling effect is obtained.

View full abstract

In order to limit the growth of microorganisms during processing of germinated brown rice (GBR), three kinds of operations for sanitation control were investigated. For a surface-disinfection treatment of brown rice, soaking in 1% of sodium hypochlorite for 10min. and 0.1% of calcium preparation solutions for 10min. at 30°C, resulted in 2log decrease by aerobic plate count in culture water after 1h of the germination processing. Soaking in 10% of sodium hypochlorite for 10min. and 1% of calcium preparation solutions for 10min at 30°C were found to inhibit germination, respectively. During the germination processing, including aeration stage and non-aeration stage, continuous ultraviolet irradiation on the culture water in the water tank resulted in limited bacterial growth in culture water below 10²CFU/ml by aerobic plate count. Moreover, the turbidity of the culture water was improved by filtration of the stored water using activated carbon-hollow fiber filter. The filtration by activated carbon-hollow fiber filter during the germination processing was an effective method to eliminate microorganisms and contamination factor during GBR production. It also improved the efficiency of ultraviolet irradiation effect on the culture water.

View full abstract

Radiant heat incident on a pig aggravates its body heat during hot summer days and alleviates its body cooling during cold winter days. The radiation configuration factors of the pig are essential for evaluating the amount of the incident radiation heat from surrounding objects. In this study, a surface-model was used in order to obtain the configuration factors based on the shape of the pig body. The surface-model was a three-dimensional graphic pig with 9304 surface-mounted triangular patches. This polyhedric surface-model was generated from data obtained by three-dimensional shape measurement of a standing stuffed pig with a live weight of 88kg. The configuration factors of the surface-model pig to the surrounding rectangular planes were numerically calculated by using computer graphics, the law of solid-angle projection and the method of numerical integration.
The percentage errors of the calculated configuration factors were estimated to be not larger than 2% by the theorem of summation for configuration factors and the theorem of propagation of errors. This led to the conclusion that the accuracy of the calculated configuration factors was three significant digits or more.
The figures for determining the configuration factors of the 88kg pig to rectangular planes on the side wall, in front of or behind the pig, or on the ceiling were presented as a function of one side length in the plane with the other side length and the normal distance between the plane and the center of the pig (that was the midpoints of the body width, body height and body length) as parameters. The diagrams for the configuration factors to rectangular planes on the floor in direct contact with or below the bases of the pig's hooves were also presented in the same way. The properties of these configuration factors fully reflected the three-dimensional shape of the unsymmetrical pig body.
From the comparisons between the configuration factors of the 27 and 65kg pigs in previous papers and the 88kg pig, the following conclusions were drawn: (1) The configuration factors of the 27, 65 and 88kg pigs were not always the smallest, medium and the largest, respectively; (2) The configuration factors of these three pigs to a rectangular plane on the side wall located at a normal distance of 2m or larger were nearly the same, and independent of the weight, that is, the size of the pig body; (3) The configuration factors of the pigs to a rectangular plane on the side wall at a normal distance of less than 2m, in front of or behind the pig, on the ceiling or on the floor were different, depending on the weight.

View full abstract

It has been reported that paddy moisture can be measured using high frequency coil because coil inductance varies with paddy moisture content. In this paper, the effect of bulk density of paddy was investigated. A multiple regression equation was proposed to express the relation among coil inductance, bulk density of paddy and moisture content.
Experiments indicated that the coil inductance increased 0.043mH with the bulk density of sieved paddy (moisture content 28.4%) varying from 0.55g/cm³ to 0.73g/cm³. The bulk density of paddy showed stronger effect with the increasing paddy moisture content. At the specified frequency of 1MHz, the proposed model can fit the measured inductance with an average error of about 0.0015 for the moisture content ranging from 15.5% to 28.4%.

View full abstract

As a preliminary step to develop a multiobjective design method of livestock feed formulations using a genetic algorithm, simultaneous optimum design of three kinds of feed, such as poultry feed, swine feed and cattle feed were tried. Twelve different rations of feed ingredients such as corn, grain sorghum, defatted rice bran, and others were designed under constraint conditions of specified nutrient contents. Examples of nutrient contents utilized were crude protein, digestible crude protein, total digestive nutrition and others. Genetic algorithm reported in the previous paper has been improved upon to minimize the raw material cost of three feed formulations mentioned above.
Seven simulations were carried out for different feed formulation using twelve raw materials under three conditions. Firstly, the volume of each raw material for poultry, swine and cattle feed was sufficiently prepared for mix design without restriction. Secondly, the total volume of specified raw materials such as corn and/or corn gluten feed and their usable volumes for three types of feed were restricted. Thirdly, the total volume of specified raw materials such as corn and/or corn gluten feed was restricted but their usable volumes for three types of feed were not restricted.
Based on this study, it was cleared that the multiobjective genetic algorithm which was developed in this research has the feasibility to attain the simultaneous optimum design of three kinds of feed formulation under various conditions.

View full abstract

About the optimum layout design problem of agricultural facilities such as packing house, precooling and insulated facility, and others during site layout design, basic program to support the rational construction of such facilities using simulated annealing (SA), which is one of the heuristic algorithms, was coded in C language and preliminary layout design simulations were carried out to get some information for the development of a program for practical problems.
The evaluation of optimum solution of layout design simulations was carried out based on the cost which was a function of the level of superposition between facility and truck yard or road, the cumulative distance between entrance of facilities and truck yard, and cumulative distance between the center of rectangular figures of facility layouts.
As a result of the comparison with the optimum solution by hill climbing (HC), which is one of the solutions of combinatorial optimization problems, the averaged value of cost evaluation by simulated annealing was lower than that of hill climbing by approximately 100. And also, the value of standard deviation of the cost by SA was lower than that of HC. It was cleared that SA, which is comparatively difficult to trap at a local minimum, performed better than HC.

View full abstract

A commercial-scale ice pond refrigeration system (IPS) with a 1200m³ ice pond was operated to store potatoes for a period of seven months until the early summer following the harvest and its energy balance was analyzed. The system COP (Coefficient of Performance) for ice making was about 20, that for cooling was about 1.7 and the cycle system COP of the IPS was about 1.4. These COP values demonstrated the energy-saving performance of the IPS when compared with a conventional refrigeration system. The heat gain from the top surface of an ice pond forms about half of the total heat load on the ice pond. But, when the IPS is employed for only potato storage by using a minimum quantity of ice, about 50% of latent heat accumulated in the manufactured ice can be used efficiently for cooling of a storage warehouse.

View full abstract

In 1995, when the author had an opportunity to investigate the running cost of a rice drying processing storage facility equipped with 10 dry storage bins with a capacity of 335 tons a bin, called a “Country Elevator” in Japan, the energy required for reducing 1kg of moisture was a must in calculation of the cost. This is technically termed specific energy consumption in English. To determine whether the figure obtained as a result of the investigation was correct or not as compared with that of the drying apparatus under the same ambient air temperature and drying rate, the figures cited in the past related literature were examined. The figures of specific energy consumption are usable as an index for comparing the performance of various dryers before introduction and for evaluating the ability displayed afterwards. However, this information has never been sorted yet either in Japan or abroad. Therefore, the author attempted to arrange the figures of specific energy consumption which were discovered in the literature collected for every type of drying apparatus. These figures were: 5.51MJ/kg-moist in column dryers with high temperature, 3.65MJ/kg-moist in bin drying with low temperature, and 1.78MJ/kg-moist in bin drying with dehumidifier, respectively.

View full abstract

Investigating damage to greenhouses and weather observation data identified damage factors concerning greenhouses due to snow. Namely, it was found that the damage was most serious when snow fell at around 0°C. It was also found that greenhouses collapsed mainly due to the bending of skeleton pipes without breaking cover materials. We obtained data for structural analyses from these observations. It is necessary to produce a snow damage prevention procedure for each damage factor.

View full abstract