Identification of parameters of the separation process of safflower seed material on sieves

Abstract

Abstract Separation of seed mixtures for the purpose of their purification or calibration by fractions is a mandatory technological operation in the processing of most crops. Due to its properties, the process of separation of seed mixtures of individual crops has undefined parameters or low efficiency of its flow. A similar seed material is safflower, the parameters of the purification process of which were determined in the work taking into account different methods of separation of the components of the mixture. The work involves determining the parameters of the holes of the sieves and the scheme of their installation during the separation of the seed mixture of safflower, provided the maximum quality of seeds. For this purpose, the dimensional characteristics of safflower seeds and characteristic impurities were determined, which allowed to determine the possibilities of their qualitative separation. As a result of experiments, variation curves of dimensional characteristics of safflower seed mixture components in thickness and width were established. To imitate hard-to-separate components, winter wheat and pea grains were added to safflower seeds. The efficiency of sieve separation was also determined taking into account different types of sieve openings. Studies of the process of purification of safflower seed mixture were performed both on traditional flat stamped sieves and on the proposed sieves with activators. A study on the separation of safflower seed mixtures on traditional sieves with round holes with a diameter of 5.0 mm and rectangular holes with a width of 3.0 mm has been carried out. For the first time, a sieve with five-petalled epicycloid and volume activators was used to clean the seed mixture, which, thanks to the innovative design, allows us to increase the efficiency of the separation process. For the first time, a well-grounded method of determining the coefficient, which comprehensively takes into account the parameters of holes and jumpers, can be used to optimize the parameters of seed and grain cleaning machines. The separation efficiency of the safflower seed mixture was determined both by the content of fractions and by the indicators of 1000 seed weight, germination energy and seed germination. It has been found that to increase the productivity and quality of separation, it is advisable to use sieves with sieve activators: the upper sieve with five-petalled epicycloid activators 5 mm, and the lower with elongated holes 3 mm wide as well as volume activators.