Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXI, Issue 2
Written by Mehmet Emin GOKDUMAN, Deniz YILMAZ
For many years, mechanization of harvesting and threshing has been successfully implemented for various crops and has been developed depending on technological progress. However, the processes of threshing, separating and cleaning of medicinal aromatic plants are carried out by conventional methods (by hand) after the products are dried. This case leads to damage in the product, loss of labor and yield. In order to help to overcome these disadvantages and separate the dried products from the foreign materials such as stalk, spall and dust special separating systems designed depending on the plant are needed. In this study, the separation-cleaning performances required for Sage (Salvia officinalis), for our country and the Mediterranean Region, have been determined. Performance values and working limits of the separating unit for sage (Salvia officinalis) have been determined. The separating unit is consisting of chassis, mainframe, two sieves, which have adjustable vibrating, velocity and inclination features, sieve housings, inclination adjusting mechanism and material outlet unit. The performance as separating efficiency, work efficiency and specific power consumption of separating unit were determined. In order to determine the separation performances of the separating unit, 3 different sieves type experiments were performed depending on the amount of 3 different feedings. Experiments were carried out at 3 different sieve speeds and 3 different sieve slopes for sage. Each trial was performed in three replicates. According to the study results, separating efficiency for sage (Salvia officinalis) used in the study changed between 41.44% and 97.89%. Work efficiency of separation unit changed between 0.69 kg/h and 6.00 kg/h. In different operations, specific power consumption of separation unit varied between 3.52 kW/kg and 30.06 kW/kg.
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