H. Bagheri; M. Rasekh; M. H. Kianmehr
Abstract
Introduction Lentil (Lens culinaris medic) is an important and highly nutritious crop belonging to the family of legumes. Lentil is cultivated worldwide but competition with weeds is a problem affecting production and can reduce yield by more than 80%. The study on the separation of impurities in bulk ...
Read More
Introduction Lentil (Lens culinaris medic) is an important and highly nutritious crop belonging to the family of legumes. Lentil is cultivated worldwide but competition with weeds is a problem affecting production and can reduce yield by more than 80%. The study on the separation of impurities in bulk lentils (Euphorbia helioscopia weed, Wild oat weed and etc.) by a gravity separator has an extreme importance. Since no study has been done to date, in this study, the effects of different parameters of a gravity separator (longitudinal and latitudinal slopes, oscillation frequency and amplitude) on the separation of foreign matters in lentil seeds were evaluated. A dimensionless number (v/aω) which shows ration of air current velocity blown to lentil to the maximum velocity of table oscillation, was considered in ratio of separation. Materials and Methods In this research, lentil samples were taken from farms in Ardebil Province (Bileh-Savar cultivar). A gravity separator apparatus was also used for separating impurities from lentil seeds. A Laboratory Gravity Separator Type LA-K (Westrup A/S Denmark) was used to separate impurities from bulk lentils. In this machine, table settings were as follows; longitudinal slope parameters (1°,1.5°, 1.75°, 2° and 2.5°), latitudinal slope (0.5°, 1°, and 1.5°), frequency of oscillation (380, 400, 420 and 450 cycles min-1), and amplitude of oscillation (5 and 7 mm), these settings were all adjustable. Similarly, the instrument had 5 boxes whereby, through proper adjustment, the heavier material was transferred toward the right side of the table and lighter material moved toward the left side. Through proper adjustment of the main parameters of the instrument, the impurities were separated from bulk lentils. Then using an electronic seed counter, five groups of seed which each group containing 100 seeds were counted and selected. Results and Discussion The results of variance analysis of the factorial design with three factors of table settings; (longitudinal slope at 5 levels, latitudinal slope at 3 levels, and frequency of oscillation of the table at 4 levels) are demonstrated in Table 1. It showed the main effect of table settings. Oscillation of frequency, latitudinal slope, and longitudinal slope, the mutual binary effect of latitudinal and longitudinal slope, the mutual binary effect of the latitudinal slope and the frequency of oscillation, the mutual binary effect of the longitudinal slope and the frequency of oscillation and the mutual triple effect of oscillation frequency, longitudinal slope, and latitudinal slope, were significant at the probability level of 1% and the mutual binary effect of the latitudinal slope and frequency of oscillation significant at the probability level of 5%. The results showed that increase of latitudinal slope of table and increase of longitudinal slope from 1 to 2 degrees will increase the separation percentage of impurities from lentil seeds. Moreover, the separation percentage of impurities from lentil seeds to longitudinal slope, under the various latitudinal slope and dimensionless number of (v/aω) and amplitude of oscillation of 5 mm and 7 mm, were investigated. Results showed that in all conditions with increasing of the longitudinal slope from 2^°-〖2.5〗^°, separation percentage of impurities from bulk lentils will decrease. This was due to the fact that under the stated conditions, distribution of seeds on the surface of the table was more homogenous. Note that at the amplitude of oscillation of 7 mm, transference of materials towards the right side of the table output edge was halted and the surface of the table was not fully covered by the fed materials, and separation decreased. The results of the experiment showed that the maximum separation of impurities from bulk lentils was 90.2 percent (v/aω=171). Conclusion 1- Increased latitudinal slope of the table from 0.5° to 1° and longitudinal slope of table from 1° to 2° were resulted in increased separation percentage of impurities from bulk lentils. 2- The results demonstrated that at settings of longitudinal slope of 2°, latitudinal slope of 1°, and frequency of oscillation of 400 cycles min-1, air velocity of 5.7 m s-1 and amplitude of oscillation of 5 mm (v/aω=171), the maximum separation will be 90.2%. In this case, the output lentil seeds contained the least amount of impurities here.
S. Kamgar; F. Noori Gushki; H. Mustafavand
Abstract
Introduction
The main producers of lentil are Canada, India, Nepal and China, respectively and Iran is the ninth producer in the world. The hand pulling is the usual method of lentil harvesting. Use of conventional combine because of short leg varieties, wide combine head in dry land and grain losses ...
Read More
Introduction
The main producers of lentil are Canada, India, Nepal and China, respectively and Iran is the ninth producer in the world. The hand pulling is the usual method of lentil harvesting. Use of conventional combine because of short leg varieties, wide combine head in dry land and grain losses by cutter bar vibrations is impossible. So a mechanism should be designed to harvest the lentil plants with minimum damage. This mechanism should be evaluated under different tests of crop and machines such as forward speed (FS), grain moisture content (GMC), different varieties and other parameters. Some researchers studied the effects of GMC (Andrews and et al., 1993; Huitink, 2005; Adisa, 2009; Abdi and Jalali, 2013) and FS on grain losses (Geng et al., 1984; Swapan et al., 2001; Mostafavand and Kamgar, 2014; Hunt, 1995). Field tests were conducted at three levels of FS 1.5, 3 and 4.5 km.h-1; three levels of cutting height (CH) 4, 8 and 13 cm and two levels of GMC, 8 and 14% on two varieties of lentils including Flip and Shiraz with three replications.
Materials and Methods
The feeder and cutter mechanism for chickpea harvesting that was the base design of device which is notched wheel and counter shear, was used. The other components of device were dividers, slat and chain feeders, belt and pulleys, chassis, elevator conveyor and storage. Two split plot design based on a randomized complete design was used to determine the effects of above treatments on lentil losses.
Results and Discussion
The ANOVA results indicated that the all studied factors; FS of feeder and cutter mechanism, CH and GMC had significant effect on losses of Shiraz variety (P0.05). The ranges of losses of Flip variety at 8% GMC were 8.6 to 10% for FS of 1.5 km.h-1, 9.1 to 10.4% for FS of 3 km.h-1and 10.4 to 11.4% for FS of 4.5 km h-1. These ranges at 14% GMC were 7.9 to 8.9% for FS of 1.5 km.h-1, 8.4 to 9.2% for FS of 3 km.h-1and 8.5 to 10% for FS of 4.5 km h-1. The ranges of losses of Shiraz variety at 8% GMC were 8.3 to 10.9% for FS of 1.5 km.h-1, 9 to 12.4% for FS of 3 km h-1and 10.7 to 13.6% for FS of 4.5 km h-1. These ranges at 14% GMC were 8.3 to 9.1% for FS of 1.5 km h-1, 8.3 to 9.9% for FS of 3 km h-1and 9.2 to 11.5% for FS of 4.5 km h-1. The comparison between two varieties at different levels of FS, GMC and CH indicated that the lentil losses of Shiraz variety were more than the other variety at 8 cm CH at 8 and 14% GMC. The difference of losses between two varieties was 0.8% at FS of 4.5 km.h-1 at 14% GMC where this value was 2% at 8% GMC and same FS and at 14% GMC and 8 cm CH from FS of 3 to 4.5 km h-1 was 0.3% and 1% for Flip and Shiraz varieties, respectively. Also at 14% GMC and 13 cm CH, the differences within group were 0.8 and 1.4% where at 8% GMC and 13 cm CH were 1 and 1.2% for Flip and Shiraz varieties, respectively. The results of the study of field evaluation of cutter and feeder mechanism of chickpea harvester for lentil harvesting showed that FS, CH and GMC at 1% probability for Shiraz variety and FS and GMC at 1% probability had significant effect on lentil losses but CH at 5% probability for Flip variety had no significant effect. The lentil losses were increased by increase in FS, CH and decreasing of GMC for both varieties. There was no significant difference from 1.5 to 3 km.h-1 and 4 to 8 cm CH in Flip variety while significant difference was at all levels of FS and CH in Shiraz variety.
Conclusions
At studied varieties, Flip variety because of more performance and minimum of losses was better than Shiraz variety. Also to achieve the lowest of losses by feeder and cutter mechanism, FS of 3 km h-1, GMC of 14%, CH of 8 cm and variety of Flip was recommended.
