Effects of some air-jet impingement parameters on the removal of sunflower seeds from the heads in linear movement

Abstract

Due to success of air-jet application in food and agricultural sciences, a new method was invented based on the impingement jets in order to eliminate a number of problems present in mechanical methods of removing sunflower seeds from the head. When the sunflower head had linear velocity and the nozzle was fixed, the effects of the seeds’ location on the sunflower head, reservoir pressure, nozzle diameter, linear velocity of the sunflower head, and the distance between the nozzle outlet and the surface of the sunflower head on its removed area were examined. The regions removed by the impingement of the air-jet were photographed and the area of the removed regions was calculated based on the image processing technique. The results showed that the area of the removed region increased with increasing the nozzle diameter, reservoir pressure, and distance between nozzle outlet and sunflower head; also, the area of the removed region increased with decreasing the linear velocity of the sunflower head. The maximum value of the area of the removed region in all regions was obtained when the linear velocity, nozzle diameter, reservoir pressure, and distance between nozzle outlet and sunflower head were equal to 1 cm sec^-1, 8 mm, 800 K Pa, and 30 mm, respectively. The minimum value of the area of the removed region in all regions was obtained when the linear velocity, nozzle diameter, reservoir pressure, and distance between nozzle outlet and sunflower head were equal to 3 cm sec^-1, 4 mm, 600 K Pa, and 10 mm, respectively.