Construction of a Seed Pod Husker and Evaluating with Soybean in Laboratory Scale
Journal Title: Journal of Agricultural Machinery - Year 2019, Vol 9, Issue 1
Abstract
Introduction Nowadays, due to growth and development of the husbandry and its worthiness in providing human basic needs, affecting parameters such as costs, efficiency and fuel consumption is significantly important. So, increasing the efficiency of threshing machine could lead us to huge savings in energy. However using the conventional drums and concaves have some problems such as damaging seeds due to impact, complicated manufacturing technology and spending a lot of energy in separating process. Therefore in order to overcome above mentioned problems especially energy consumption, a new seed pod husker based on rubbing was designed, fabricated and tested in this research. Materials and Methods Practical tests of this device were carried out on soybean which was harvested in a farm of Babolsar city. The experimental design was simple randomized complete design with three replications. The rotational speed of rollers and distance between rollers varied in three levels of 110, 170, and 210 rpm and 7, 8, and 9 mm for soybean. The measured parameters consisted of efficiency, separation and loss. For designing the seed pod husker, the required electric motor power and the torque for separating seeds from its pods were calculated. After reviewing the physical and mechanical characteristic of some seed pod crops specially, soybean, a seed pod husker was designed in SOLIDWORKS 2013 software. In order to facilitate seeds separation from the pod, it was preferred to use the right-round and left-round Archimedes screw on the rollers. According to the preliminary evaluations, it was considered to use a speed range of 110 to 210 rpm; it was because of that the speed lower than 110 rpm was not able to open pods and the speed higher than 210 rpm caused hyper movements of pods. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and mean comparisons and interaction between the parameters were performed using the SPSS 22 software. Results and Discussion The results indicated that the rollers were acceptable and sticking of pods were not seen. Results indicated that the efficiency of this device was increased with increasing the rotational speed and then was decreased. Increasing the rotational speed was led to increase separation. It is because of this fact that the performance of the huskerâs component will be more powerful and crops suffer bigger impacts. The chart of device loss had a relatively upward slope. It could be due to a tougher collision between the seeds and the rollers. Increasing the roller distance, first decreased the efficiency of soybean and then increased that. The results indicated that separation efficiency decreased by increasing the distance. The reason for that was due to unavailable necessary force to separate the seed and pod. As the roller distance increased, the total losses of the device also increased. The reason for this was likely increasing in the movement of the seeds. Conclusion The results of practical tests and qualitative observations showed that the device had sufficient resistance against the maximum torque produced by the crop. Influence of rotational speed of rollers and rollers clearance on the efficiency, separation and loss were significant for new fabricated seed pod husker (p < 0.01). The capacity of the machine for soybean was 28.506 (kg hr-1). To achieve maximum efficiency, maximum separation and minimum loss for soybean, authors suggest using (9mm-170rpm), (7mm-210rpm) and (9mm-110rpm) compounds, respectively. Eventually, it is suggested to evaluate this machine for other seed pod crops and for other parameters such as germination percentage, electric conductivity and ergonomic issues such as noise and machine vibration. Of course, it is recommended to survey the impact of length of husking roller, shaft rotation method and thread types on measurement parameters.        Â
Authors and Affiliations
S. Hasantabar,S. R. Mousavi Seyedi,D. Kalantari,
Optimization Effect of Ultrasound on Rupture Force and Kernel Extracting Quality of Walnut using Response Surface Method (RSM)
IntroductionOne of the most important and sensitive steps after walnut harvesting is the separation of the kernel from its shell. Walnut rupture force is an appropriate criterion for design with high performance and bett...
Study of The Vapor Thermo-Compressor to Reduce Energy Consumption in the Sugar Production Line using Computational Fluid Dynamics
IntroductionLarge industrial factories often discharge significant quantities of low-pressure steam (dead steam) into the atmosphere, which causes energy losses. Retaining low-pressure steam content reduces boiler load,...
Prioritizing the Power Arrival in Khuzestan Province Agriculture using FAHP and FTOPSIS
Introduction Understanding the status of tractor power in any region is a key factor in setting a mechanization planning to improve the capacity of mechanized operations. For this reason, it is necessary that the availab...
Comparison of Rice Direct Seeding Methods (Mechanical and Manual) with Transplanting Method
The main method of rice planting in Iran is transplanting. Due to poor mechanization of rice production, this method is laborious and costly. The other method is direct seeding in wet lands which is performed in the one...
Application of Artificial Neural Networks for Predicting the Yield and GHG Emissions of Sugarcane Production
Introduction One of the most important sources of the sugar production is sugarcane.Sugar is one of the eight human food sources (wheat, rice, corn, sugar, cattle, sorghum, millet and cassava). Also sugarcane is mainly u...