Intensification of stem material shredding process

Abstract

At the current stage of technology development, roughage shredding is carried out mainly by mechanical means, which ensures high reliability and is characterized by the simplicity of the design of working bodies. The main issues of our work are to improve the process of shredding roughage by changing the design of the chopper and optimizing its parameters, which will ensure shredding of roughage with minimal specific energy and metal consumption. To conduct the research, a two-stage chopper design was proposed, and a pilot plant was manufactured, which has the ability to chop long-fiber feed materials and separate them along the fibers with breakage of stem nodes. The operating range of the rotor speed was in the range of 500-700 rpm, and the gap between the movable and fixed pins 0.015-0.025 m. The nature of the interaction of a particle of roughage, after cutting the layer with a curved knife, with the wing and the pin during the splitting of the stem along the fibers was determined. It was found that with a decrease in the rotor speed, the material moving to the pins does not reach absolute speed, which ensures the creation of an impact that should be sufficient to destroy the stem. In addition, a rotor speed of less than 500 rpm does not allow for the creation of an air flow that ensures the removal of feed components from the splitting zone, thereby limiting the chopper throughput. Increasing the rotation speed above 900 rpm leads to an increase in energy performance and reduces the percentage of split stalks of roughage.