DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A DRIED GRAIN PACKING MACHINE

Abstract

ABSTRACT Efficient post-harvest handling of grains can tremendously contribute to socio-economic empowerment in developing nations. The challenges usually encountered during post-harvesting operations have limited the large scale farming activities especially in rural areas. The manual method being employed to dry and pack grains is so tedious that it discourages productivity. 3

Sometimes, it introduces impurities to the grain, causes grain damages and even may reduce the quality of grain. As a result, a mechanical packer was designed and fabricated. Research on mechanization of large scale production of cereal grains, however, is very low especially in the rural areas. The main objective of the study is to develop and evaluate the performance of a grain packing machine. The packing machine consists of frame, cyclone, cyclone air discharge, conveying pipe, blower, suction inlet, bagging section and petrol engine. The diameter of the suction pipe was determined to be 211 mm while the total pressure in the pipe to overcome the friction been generated in the pipe was 653.4 Pa, the volume of grains that was flowing from the blower curve according to the pressure drop measured at the inlet of the pipe was 1.15m3/s. The performance test of the machine was carried out, the grains that were used to test the machine include Rice, Millet and Guinea corn which were spread evenly on the concrete floor. Grain thicknesses of 2.5, 2.0 and 1.5 cm by using calibrated scale for various thicknesses on the smooth ground, operator speeds of 2.0, 1.5 and 0.7 m/s were chosen because the average human working speed is 1.5 m/s and machine speeds by using different pulleys of 2880, 1440 and 720 rpm were used as independent variables and their effects were shown on dependent variables such as machine capacity, collection efficiency, percentage of broken grains and percentage of whole grains. The ANOVA results showed that the independent variables does not have a significant effect on the machine capacity while machine speed and interaction between AB has significant effect on collection efficiency. Also, operator speed (A), grain thickness (B), machine speed (C) and interaction (AB) has significant (p<0.05) effect on the percentage broken grain and operator speed, grain thickness and machine speed has significant effects on percentage whole grain.