A STUDY ON SEPARATION AND CLEANING OF PEANUT SEEDS

The present study was conducted to investigate some engineering parameters affecting separating and cleaning efficiencies for improving sieve unit to be more appropriate for the Egyptian varieties of peanut seed. To achieve this goal, experimental unit was fabricated and constructed in the workshop of Agric. Eng. Dep., Fac. of Agric., Suez Canal Univ., Ismailia, Egypt. Some physical and mechanical properties of seeds such as (length, width, thickness and coefficient of friction) were investigated. Four sieve oscillations (250, 275, 300 and 325 cpm), six sieve inclination angles (4°, 2° upward, zero, 2°, 4° and 6° downward) and four feed rates (15, 20, 25 and 30 kg/hr.cm) were studied under aeromechanical separation. The obtained results inducted that, the minimum separation and cleaning efficiencies were 30.0 and 92.5%, respectively at sieve oscillation of 250 cpm, feed rate of 30 kg/h.cm under sieve inclination angle of 4° upward with no seed loss. Meanwhile the maximum separation and cleaning efficiencies were 95.0 and 96.8%, respectively at sieve oscillation of 325 cpm, feed rate of 15 kg/h.cm under sieve inclination angle 6° downward with high seed loss of about 13.8%. To keep seed loss less than 0.5% with adequate separation and cleaning efficiencies about 90.9, 95.8% respectively, prefer to sieve oscillation of 300 cpm with zero inclination angle, and feed rate of 15 kg/h.cm.