Abstract
Besides global climate changes and the exhaustion of natural resources, the concern about energy resources is one of the main challenges of 21st century. The growing population and, consequently, the increasing demand for food, fibre and bioenergy leads to an intensive use of machinery and equipment, resulting in more energy required and more greenhouse gases emitted. Materials and energy sources are consumed during a product’s life cycle, so it is important to optimize them through reuse, recycling, reducing their demand and replacing them for more environmentally-friendly materials. In current agricultural production system, machinery is considered fundamental for biomass production. Energy analysis in agricultural machinery has been evaluated, but the indicators are mostly from the late 1960s and mostly were based on car industry. Studies on the embodied energy and emissions in agricultural mechanization should be carried out, due to the importance of food and bioenergy production systems in world economy. This study aimed to determine the inventory for materials, embodied energy and greenhouse gases emissions during the life cycle of a coffee harvester. Data were collected in a multinational manufacturer, in its unit located at Piracicaba municipality, State of São Paulo. For the coffee harvester, the consumption of the direct input used in the assembly phase and the input used in the maintenance phase were accounted. Input data were presented as materials flows, which were translated by their embodied energy indices and emissions factor, resulting in the embodied energy and greenhouse gases emissions required by the production system. Results presented the following embodied energy (67.05 MJ kg-1) and greenhouse gases emissions (4.75 kg CO2e kg-1).
