Research Article Open Access

Effectiveness of Redesigned Larger Grain Stripping Tools on Stripping Sorghum BicolorGrains off the Panicles

Abstract

An experimental rotational grain-stripping rig device was fabricated to study the effect of using the larger re-designed stripping tools as compared toconventional smaller existing stripping tools to strip sorghum grain off the grain panicles. The redesigning of the stripping tools involved increasing their sizes by a scale factor of 1.5X and 2X over the current commercially available stripping tool. The stripping tools are attached to the drum such that they lean in the direction of the drum rotation at advance angles of 15° which is as in the current commercial machines setting. The three re-designed larger stripping tools, 1.5X*20deg, 1.5X*30deg and 2X*20deg yielded mean un-stripped grain loss of 0.3%, 1.0% and 0.8% respectively which was a significantimproved performance than the 1X*30deg which had 4.5% mean un-stripped grain loss. The study therefore shows that sorghum strip harvesting can be improved with appropriately designed stripping tools.

H.P. Masebu, L. Chico-Santamarta, M. J.Crook, D. R. White, R.J. Godwin

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