Abstract
ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to evaluate the sustainability of a broiler chicken production system, with confinement in Darkhouse sheds, by energetic analysis. Energy flows of a complete production cycle, 56 days, were considered, of which the energy inputs and outputs were computed in direct and indirect forms, by estimating the energy coming from the quantity of feed, water, machinery and equipment, human labor, sheds, silos, among other components of the productive system, multiplied by their respective energetic coefficients. The total energy demand of a system in a production cycle for the production of 1 kg of live chicken and its energy efficiency coefficient were determined. The studied system had energy conversion coefficient of 95%, demonstrating that the production model has high energy conversion efficiency and fits a sustainable model. On average, 37.55 MJ kg-1 of live chicken were necessary. The main limiting point of the system corresponded to the energy consumed in the form of feed, with 75% of the total direct energy.
Highlights
A mechanism used to evaluate the efficiency of production systems is the energy balance, which establishes the energy flows inherent to the production, identifying its efficiency in energy conversion through the energy converted/energy consumed ratio and the energy needed to produce 1 kg of product (Veloso et al, 2012)
To obtain the total energy involved in the process, we calculated the conversion of the quantities of inputs used in one production cycle, represented by the direct energy inputs and the costs inherent to the energy-based depreciation, indirect energy, relative to 56 days of utilization of the components which contributed in more than one production cycle
The largest amount of direct energy entering the system came from the feed, 75%, a fact observed by several authors such as Santos & Lucas Júnior (2004), who carried out the energy balance of a conventional broiler chicken production system in which the item feed was the most energy-demanding input, representing 86.50% of the total direct energy
Summary
Broiler chicken production systems have become increasingly more technological, importing modern and automation-based scientific practices to obtain higher energetic efficiency and maximum economic benefit (Heidari et al, 2011), as in the case of the Darkhouse broiler chicken production system, which are highly efficient in food conversion compared with the conventional production system, obtaining significantly higher production (Carvalho et al, 2015).A mechanism used to evaluate the efficiency of production systems is the energy balance, which establishes the energy flows inherent to the production, identifying its efficiency in energy conversion through the energy converted/energy consumed ratio and the energy needed to produce 1 kg of product (Veloso et al, 2012). According to Ebrahimi et al (2016), if inefficient producers were aware of the most energyconsuming inputs within their processes, they would be able to considerably improve economic and energetic aspects. In this context, there is a scarcity of analyses and specific energy coefficients for certain studied components, which include the fossil energy consumed during the extraction, manufacture and transport of the raw materials and other products, adapted to the current and local conditions of the studied area (Vigne et al, 2012).
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