ALTERNATIVE FUEL CONSUMPTION MEASUREMENT DEVICE FOR MULTIPURPOSE FARM MACHINERY USE

Measuring fuel consumption of deferent farm machines is essential step and requires recommended level of accuracy. However, the majorities of methods which are being used now in Egypt are still inaccurate enough and depend more on unacceptable methods. So, in this study, the fuel consumption device was designed and built to measure the fuel consumed by farm machines also used in wide range of related applications. Major components of the designed fuel consumption device were turbine type flow sensors, electronic board and circuits, power source (common 12 volt battery available in agricultural vehicles), built-in storage memory, interfaces and display facilities, connecting wires and housing. Turbine flowmeters Vision 1000 sensors have been used to build the fuel consumption device which have very small flowrates of 0.05 - 2.5 l/min. Electronic board used in the study was a modified version of ATmega328 series chip. The pulses of the flow sensors are being converted into consumption and displayed Liquid crystal display (LCD) screen has been attached with multi capacity memory card and USB interface. The device has been calibrated with standard method of using volumetric flow rate recorded through precise device made for that purpose. 110 hp New Holland tractor and a 16 hp medium size engine have been used for tracing the accuracy and differences of using fuel consumption device at stationery mode. In field, the fuel consumption device attached to two different machines, a 58 hp Claas combine harvester tested on ground with no crop. Second farm machine was the New Holland tractor 110 hp running in field alone and loaded with disc plough, to show the differences appear during different conditions for more reliability for fuel measurement device. Results showed that for the tractor, there were acceptable linear relationships between real volumetric consumption of fuel flow and volume measured by the fuel flow device with 0.8 % differences between averages at full throttle, and 0.16 % differences between averages at lower throttle. For 16 hp engine tested in lab, the differences were higher and around 1.5 % and 2.4 % in case of running the engine at full throttle and lower throttle position respectively. For recording the tractor fuel consumption in field, increasing both forward speed and load equipped with it increased fuel consumption. Where, attaching disc plough to the tractor increased the fuel consumed by the engine by 20.75 % at low tractor speed and as appeared on device display screen. In high forward speed the amount of fuel recorded when the tractor operated with disc plough has increased by 26.45. For Claas combine harvester, data showed the significant differences of fuel consumed. Where, in low forward speed of combine harvester, amount of 6.22 l/h has been recorded, and 12.70 l/h has been consumed by combine engine but at high forward speed with standard divisions of 0.24 and 0.19 under high and low forward speed of the combine respectively.