Study of System Parameters on Performance of Cylindrical type Water Hyacinth Chopper with Different Cutting Blades
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Date
2003
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Publisher
MPUAT, Udaipur
Abstract
Water hyacinth (Eichornia Crassipes [Mart] Solms) has been called the worst aquatic plant
in the world. In India over 5 lakh hectares of water holding areas have this fast multiplying weed. It
affects the resources of water adversely by blocking canals and pumps in irrigation projects, by
interfering with hydroelectricity production, navigation, fishing and increasing evaporation rate in
water bodies. It’s high moisture content (95 %) and low bulk density (167 kg/m3) makes
transportation and utilization a problem. Keeping above points in mind, a project was undertaken to
select a suitable blade system for the existing water hyacinth chopper cum crusher in order to reduce
its volume and weight. The performance of the selected blade systems was evaluated on the basis of
its ability to reduce volume and weight of water hyacinth. Four levels of cutter speed (10.46, 11.77,
13.08, 14.39 m/s) and three levels of feed rate (0.6, 1.2, 1.8 kg) were used for the performance
evaluation. The parameters studied were per cent reduction in volume and weight, power and energy
required in chopping and crushing in water hyacinth. Regression equations were developed to predict
the apparent specific volume, per cent weight reduction, power requirement and specific energy
requirement of chopped water hyacinth at different feed rates and cutter speeds for different blade
systems. The experimental results reveal that the existing cylindrical cutter with shear bar gives
maximum weight reduction of 35.33 per cent and volume reduction of 73.2 per cent. The capacity
found was of 13.5 tons/day. The reel type forage cutter with shear bar gives maximum weight
reduction of 29.26 percent and volume reduction of 61.20 per cent with a capacity of 43.2 tons/day.
The cost of savings in transportation was 662.83 Rs/ton for the blade system with existing cylindrical
cutter and shear plate. Therefore it was concluded that the existing cylindrical cutter with shear bar
gave the best results in terms of volume and weight reduction.
Description
Study of System Parameters on Performance of Cylindrical type Water Hyacinth Chopper with Different Cutting Blades
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Citation
Jagannath and mathur, 2003