Performance Evaluation of CAAMS Teff Thresher

Abstract

Teff is the most important indigenous cereal crops of Ethiopia, where it is thought to have originated, despite its versatile merits, teff production processes are dominated by traditional methods. To solve one of its postharvest production problems, the traditional threshing and the resulted losses of quantity and quality, engine powered threshers have been developed by different institutions, including Asella Agricultural Engineering Research Center (AAERC). Nevertheless, as most of the existing machineries are constrained with low output and cleaning problems. An imported CAAMS teff thresher was evaluated and tested with the objective of evaluating its performances. The machine was tested at drum speeds of 800, 1000 and 1200 rpm and feed rates of 6, 8 and 10 kg/min respectively. From the test results, the grand mean of threshing efficiency, cleaning efficiency, threshing capacity, separation loss and fuel consumption of 100%, 97.34%, 2.511%, 111.32 kg/hr, 2.7% and 0.2 lit/hr were obtained, respectively. In addition, the result of statistical analysis showed that, the drum speed have significant effects on cleaning efficiency and separation loss, whereas the feed rate have a significant effects on threshing capacity.