DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF TRACTOR OPERATED ROTARY SHREDDER FOR MAIZE STALK IN-SITU UTILIZATION
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Date
2014-06-30
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UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES, RAICHUR
Abstract
A tractor operated rotary shredder was designed and developed for shredding the maize crop in the field itself to utilize the maize crop residue as a soil surface cover. The shredder consists of main frame, hitch frame, gear box, chain-sprocket transmission and rotor shaft with blades fitted around the rotor shaft at an angular spacing of 120 degree from one array of series of blades to other series. The overall size of prototype shredder is 2150 mm in width, 980 mm in length and 1410 mm in height. The performance of rotary shredder was evaluated at three different forward speeds (1.5, 2.5 and 3.5 kmh-1) and three rotary speeds (640, 850 and 1050 rpm) for two types of blades (Y and L-type) and statistically analyzed the effect of these operational parameters on chop length, effective field capacity, machine output, fuel consumption and soil surface coverage. Increasing the forward speed from 1.5 to 3.5 km/h, increased the chop length from 15.27 to 44.27 cm at all rotary speeds. And increasing the rotary speeds from 640 to 1050 rpm decreased the chop length. The forward speed increases, the fuel consumption, effective field capacity and machine output increases and the percentage of soil surface coverage decreases. The costs of shredding with rotary shredder in maize crop were found to be 1617.44 Rs/ha which results in net saving in cost of 49.45 per cent. The breakeven point for rotary shredder was estimated to be 95.69 h per annum with payback period of 2.07 years.
Key words: Chopper, Crop residue, Maize stalk and Shredder.
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