DEVELOPMENT OF AN IMPROVED IAR SORGHUM THRESHER
DEVELOPMENT OF AN IMPROVED IAR SORGHUM THRESHER
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Date
2015-03
Authors
SALE, Nura Alhaji
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Abstract
Despite the high level of production of sorghum in Nigeria its threshing and cleaning
operation remains among the major challenges to farmers especially in the northern part of
the country. Efficient sorghum threshers are not available to Nigerian farmers. The
prototype thresher developed at Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) was associated
with many problems such as: low out capacity, higher scatter loss and mechanical grain
damage. To solve these problems a modified model was designed, constructed and
evaluated. The major components modified include feed hopper, cylinder, concave and
shaker. The machine performance was evaluated at various levels of moisture contents,
cylinder speed and feed rates. The results showed that threshing efficiency, cleaning
efficiency and throughput capacity of the modified thresher were 99.98, 99.95 % and
253.96kg/h respectively while those for scatter losses and mechanical grain damage were
5.45 and 3.70 % respectively. This indicate the percentage increase of 0.98, 6.95 and 56.96
% for threshing efficiency, cleaning efficiency and throughput capacity respectively and
decrease in scatter loss and grain damage of 5.98 and 3.84 % respectively. The best
combinations of the independent variables for optimum operations were 13 % moisture
content, 12.67 m/s cylinder speed and 5 kg/min feed rate. The optimum performance
values obtained were of 297 kg/h throughput capacity, while threshing efficiency, cleaning
efficiency, scatter losses and mechanical grain damage were 99.8, 99.5, 5.09, and 3.4 %
respectively.
Description
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES,
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, NIGERIA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF
MASTERS OF SCIENCE DEGREE IN AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING, FACULTY OF
ENGINEERING AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, NIGERIA
Keywords
IAR SORGHUM,, THRESHER,