Construction an innovative separator sunflower grain with new methods

Abstract

  The sunflower grain is very popular due to fresh and nutty consumption in some countries such as Iran, Turkey and many Arabic countries which is usually harvested without high capacity harvester at high moisture content in Iran. Also, the available methods have low efficiency for segregation the grains from sunflower head. Therefore, this study was conducted to design, construct and evaluate an innovative separator apparatus using the properties of nutty sunflower and applying kinematic equations. This apparatus includes the threshing and cleaning unit that the variables of its components are adjustable. So, with these capabilities, these variables can be optimized for any variety of sunflowers and this information can be used to develop suitable combine harvester. The experiments of evaluation and optimization designed using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) modeling method. The effects of rotational drum speeds (380, 280, 180 rpm), feed rates (2000, 3000, 4000 (kg (head) h-1), moisture content (60, 45, 30% w.b) for threshing unit, slope of sieves (0.12, 0.07, 0.02) oscillating frequency (7.6, 5.6, 3.6 Hz) and amplitude (25, 17.5, 10 mm) for cleaning unite were studied. Maximum and minimum threshing efficiency, separation efficiency and grain damage for threshing unit obtained 98.94 and 96.90 %, 70 and 60.04%, 1.12 and 0.49% respectively. These results for cleaning efficiency and grain loss of cleaning unite reported 94.14 and 87.95%, 2.63 and 1.23% respectively. The result of ANOVA Tables showed that the models were statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. The perturbation plots demonstrated that the moisture content had the greatest effect on threshing efficiency and grain damage followed by drum speed and feed rate. With decreasing the moisture content, threshing and separation efficiency increased and grain damage reduced. The oscillating frequency had more effect than other factors on cleaning efficiency, which with reducing it, the amount of cleaned grains increased. The optimized points were determined at the drum speed 376.634, feed rate 2000.06, moisture content 30, frequency 5.153, amplitude 25 and slope 0.02.