Modification and Performance Evaluation of a Reciprocating Machine for Shelling Peanut

摘要

A reciprocating peanut shelter was fabricated as a multi-crop sheller to shell peanut, soybean, bean, etc. (Helmy, 2001). It was constructed at the Agricultural Engineering Workshop, Faculty of Agriculture, Kafr Elsheikh Governorate and modified at the workshop of Rice Mechanization Center, Meet Eldeeba, Kafr Elsheikh Governorate, Egypt throughout the year of 2006. The present study was mainly carried out to evaluate the performance of a reciprocating peanut sheller before and after modification by supplying the sheller with feeding mechanism (conveyor belt), increasing the friction area of shelling box, and using rubber for enhancing shelling process. The experimental results showed that, the performance of a reciprocating peanut sheller after modification is better than, that before modification. Where, the value of shelling efficiency after modification was of 98.85 %, damaged seeds of 1.36 %, unshelled seeds of 1.15 %, total losses of 2.51 %, sheller productivity of 155.98 × 10~3 Mg/ h, unit energy consumption of 2.87 kW·h/Mg, cleaning efficiency of 99.06 % and criterion cost of 42.17 LE/Mg at feed rate of 160 kg/h, box speed of 1.4 m/s, moisture content about 17.12 % w.b. and air velocity of 8.37 m/s. But before modification shelling efficiency was of 95.32 %, damaged seeds of 6.12 %, unshelled seeds of 4.68 %, total losses of 10.8 %, sheller productivity of 89.20× 10~(-3) Mg/h, unit energy consumption of 3.47 kW·h/Mg, cleaning efficiency of 98.88 %, and criterion cost of 84.93 LE/Mg at feed rate of 100 kg/ h and the other studied operating conditions.