IMPROVING THE FIELD PERFORMANCE OF THE DISINTEGRATOR TAPER-PINS HAMMER MILL

Abstract

Disintegrator taper-pins hammer mills are designed for milling of grain into flour or to act as part of a feed preparation system. This mills is easy to operate, maintain and it can do excellent work without much heating but they are somewhat producing a coarse meal. The main factor limits the application of this type of hammer mills is their production of a wide range of particle sizes (non- homogenous fineness degree of milled products). This type of production could be used only for direct feeding, but it is not appropriate for processing the pelleted feeds. So, it is difficult and costly to obtain fine grinding form without repeat the grinding process for two or three times depending upon the fineness requirement, which in turn, increase grinding power and energy requirements. This research aims to improve the performance of the disintegrator taper-pins hammer mill, through a mechanical vibrating feeding unite to accurately facilitate the grains feeding rate during the grinding process, especially when the grains contains higher ratio of damaged seeds and/or higher moisture content. The study also aims to examine the effect of some operating parameters on the modified machine productivity, power and energy requirements. Milled quality in term of (particle size distribution and fineness degrees) during the milling operation was also considered. The results revealed that, the optimum values for the operation conditions were obtained at hammers speed of 39.6 m/s and mill feeding rate of 0.4 ton/h. At these levels, the best results of productivity rate (ton/h), power consumption (kW) and energy requirements (kWh/ton) were obtained. When corn milling for direct feeding, the mill should be operated at optimum operational conditions with sieve size more than 4.8 mm. Meanwhile, sieve sizes of 3.2 and 4.8 mm may be used when corn milling for processing of pelleted feeds. Theoretical analysis results reveled that, the optimum power required for operating the machine must be not less than 3.26 kW. These results proved that, the proper operating parameters corresponded with theoretical considerations as the relevant for machine operation.