Experimental substantiation of the effective height of a grain falling by a stream of liquid in an ergot release device

Abstract

The bunker grain mass coming from the combines to the purification points contains, in addition to grain, weed and harmful impurities, which include toxic sclerotia of ergot, causing disease in people and animals, and even death. Existing grain cleaning machines do not provide for a single technological process the complete release of ergot sclerotium due to the similarity of their properties and the properties of the culture being cleaned. Ergot sclerotia are less dense than grains of rye, wheat, oats and barley, which are mostly affected by ergot. Therefore, the complete isolation of ergot sclerotia from grain in one process can be carried out in aqueous solutions of inorganic salts. In order to mechanize the separation of sclerotium ergot from the grain by the wet method and to develop a device for cleaning the grain material that is not complicated in design with low energy intensity of the technological process in comparison with the existing grain cleaning machines, practical experiments were carried out on immersion of winter rye grain of the Falenskaya 4 variety into the water and in the aqueous salt solution sodium chloride (NaCl). It has been established that the effective height of the location of the loading bin relative to the surface of the aqueous solution of salt in the bath of the device for extracting harmful impurities from the grain material by the wet method is 40.0–60.0×10−3 m, at which undesirable capture of the air bubble by the grains does not occur. This determines the improvement of the quality of the technological process of cleaning the grain from harmful impurities of the developed machine for the separation of ergot.