DEVELOPMENT AND TEST ATTACHMENTS TO THE TANGENTIAL FLOW THRESHER TO SUIT CARAWAY CROP THRESHING

Abstract

The aim of this work is to develop and construct attachments to the local thresher to study the feasibility of using local cereal threshing machine for threshing caraway crop. The auxiliary parts attached to the thresher may maximize thresher exploitation. The thresher with attachments was tested at different operating conditions, at rotor speeds (500, 560, 630, and 700 rpm, moisture contents of caraway straw 10.36, 11.84 and 13.72 %. Air speeds on sieves (4.8, 5.7 and 6.8 m/s) were also tested. Some of factors were fixed such as, hole diameter of sieves was 3 mm, feed rate was 540 kg/h and concave clearance was 15 mm. The experiments were carried out in north Egypt (Tafhna - El-Azab, Zefta, Garbia governorate) during the winter season of 2007 on Caraway crop.  The obtained results show the local threshing machine can be successfully used for threshing caraway under the following conditions: seed moisture content of 11.84 %, drum speed of 500 rpm and air speed of 4.8 m/s resulting seed losses of 2.2 %, threshing efficiency of 73.7 %, and criterion energy consumed 29.04 kW.h/ton.