DEVELOPMENT OF MANUALLY DRAWN BATTERY POWERED REAPER 2909
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Date
2019-07
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JAU, JUNAGADH
Abstract
Harvesting of crop is one of the important agricultural operation. The
availability and cost of labour during harvesting season is the serious problem.
Timely harvesting of the crop is vital to achieve better quality and higher yield of the
crop. Indian agriculture faced serious challenges like scarcity of agricultural labour,
not only in peak working seasons but also in general time. Therefore, it is essential to
adopt the mechanical methods so that the timeliness in harvesting operation could be
ensured and field losses could be minimized and consequently productivity and
production could be increased. In mechanical method of harvesting self-propelled
reapers and combine harvesters are developed but they are out of reach of small
farmers due to their initial cost, complex design, land fragmentation and lack of
skilled labour. The developed manual operated reaper (ground wheel powered) do not
work satisfactory due to less available power developed by human beings. Thus, to
ensure efficient and timely harvesting operation manually drawn battery powered
reaper was developed at CAET, JAU, Junagadh, which was very simple in
construction, low maintenance and easy to operate. The machine includes main
frame, two batteries, DC motor, gear box, crop dividers, cutter bar and conveyor
belts. It is capable of cutting two rows of wheat crop placed 22.5 cm apart. After
cutting the crop is conveyed towards one side of the machine with the help of
conveyor belt. After development of battery powered reaper, it’s performance was
evaluated in the field of wheat crop. Performance evaluation of developed machine
was carried out at different forward speeds (1 km/h, 1.5 km/h and 2 km/h) anddifferent cutter bar speeds (200 rpm, 300 rpm and 400 rpm). The performance of the
machine was observed in terms of cutting efficiency, conveying efficiency, field
capacity, field efficiency and also in ergonomical parameter like heart rate, oxygen
consumption rate and energy expenditure rate. Overall best performance of reaper
was obtained at 1 km/h forward speed and 400 rpm cutter bar speed. The maximum
effective field capacity and field efficiency was found 0.074 ha/h and 90.77 %
respectively. The maximum cutting and conveying efficiency of the developed reaper
was found 95.01 % and 89.66 % respectively. The developed reaper could harvest
one hectare in 17.12 hours while by manually harvesting it required 158 man-hours.
The energy consumption of developed reaper was observed as 31.97 MJ/ha. The cost
of operation for developed reaper was found to be 1421 ₹/ha while manually
harvesting it was 5925 ₹/ha. The developed machine could reduce 75.86 % cost of
operation and 89.16 % of time as compared to the manual harvesting.