Design and construction of cereal crop residue crusher machine.

Abstract

Cereal crop residues ace fibrous parts of crops that remain after those edible to human beings have been removed. Field cereal crop residues and industrial cereal crop residues. Field crop residues are those that remain in the field harvesting and industrial crop residues are those that remain after being processed. Farmers in Uganda use cereal crop residues mainly in different ways such as for fuel as firewood and minor constructions but the major use is for livestock. The objectives of this work are to design a cereal crop residue crusher machine, to fabricate the components of cereal crop residue crusher machine based on the design specifications to test the cereal crop residue crusher machine after fabrication and assembly of the components and carry out economic evaluation. In designing material. selection, ergonomics, the techno-economic status of medium scale farmers were considered for the intended users of the machine. The functional parts of the machine included hopper this is where cereal crop residues are stored fast before in-feed, knives for chopping the cereal crop residues, rotating hammer blades this unit crush the crushed material to smaller size by impact, screen for segregating the output material according to their sizes and channel the outflow of the required particle size, pulley belts and pulleys for motion transmission components from power source to shafts, shafts for torque transmitting components. In operation, the angle of repose on hopper makes cereal residues stalks flow easily towards the cutting unit where the rotating cutting blade and counter shear choppes the material. The chopped material is transmitted towards the crushing unit consisting of swinging hammers responsible for crushing the chopped material to small particles. This process of crushing is successfully achieved with screen this screens segregates the size of crushed material required at the discharge outlet. Powered by a 5hp motor/engine, the crusher has crushing efficiency of 82%, crushing capacity of 0.33.kg/min. The cereal crop residue crusher machine can be used for small rural and urban communities.