EVALUATION OF TRACTOR MOUNTED WINNOWER AT DIFFERENT BLADE SIZES FOR FINGER MILLET
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Date
2010-07-21
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University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore
Abstract
Win nowing is a process o f separating grain from the chaff and the other impurities using natural breeze o f air or b y winnowing fans. Winnowing manually b y dropping threshed material in the natural wind is a time consuming, inefficient and drudgery to the operator. Although the performance o f existing axial flow fan type winnowers which are available in the market are satisfactory, but they require repetitive process o f winnowing and high initial investment. Keeping the above facts in vie w and feedback from the farm women or operator, the study was carried out to modify and evaluate improved tractor operated winnower and to recommend the appropriate grain cleaning fan (winnower) which can reduce labour, drudgery in cleaning and most importantly to save the winnowing time involved in the traditional practices. Tractor operated winnower consists o frotating blades supported by shaft and bearings, on which pulley is fitted. The fan assembly is enclosed in steel guarded casing/sieve in order to prevent the accident to the women who attend winnow work. The shaft and pulley receives the power from universal joint and PTO of tractor. Tractor operated winnower was evaluated to study the air ve locity at different distance from the fan at different heights using different blade sizes, capacity, efficiency and cost o f winnowing fo winnowing finger millet. It is clear from the result that on an average the airvelo city in tractor operated winnower is three times more than that o f manual winnowing at an
optimum height o f dropping and distance from the fan center. Winnower with 45 cm
blade at 955 rpm fan speed give maximum output compared to other blade sizes. The capacity o f all the three methods (manual, electric w innower and tractor operated winnower) will differ at all three levels o f moisture content, the tractor operated w innower showed highest grain output as com pared to other methods. From the winnowing efficiency, it was found that the grain moisture played an important role. The winnowingefficien cyincreased with decrease in moisture content o f chaff material and grains in all the three methods. The performance results show that the maximum efficiency was found to be in manual winnowing and minimum efficiency was found to
be in tractor operated winnower. The average power consumption per hour using electric
operated winnower was less than that o f tractor operated winnower. T herefore the cost o f
winnowing using electric operated winnower for winnowing finger millet was found to be m ore profitable followed b y tractor operated winnower as compared to manual winnowing. However in case of failure of electricity the electric operated winnower will stop working, due to this problem sometimes entire process will affect/stops in the farm field. For this reason with more output tractor operated winnowers are better than electrically operated winnowers.
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