Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Department of Agricultural Machinery and Power Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Assiut Classes, Al-Azhar University, Assiut, Egypt.
2
Department of Agricultural Products Process Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.
3
Department of Agricultural Machinery and Power Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
Sugarcane is an important cash crop in Egypt. The production cost of sugarcane is increasing year after year which reduces the profit margin of sugarcane growers, sugarcane harvesting in Egypt is done by manual labour. developing local machinery for sugarcane de-trashing is now necessity to overcome the specific problems of sugarcane production. For following reasons, )a) the price of the imported machinery is high that economical operation could not be achieved (b) the imported machines are designed according to criteria depending on agricultural systems different from that prevailing in Egyptian fields. The main aim of this research was study the factors related to mechanical de-trashing of sugarcane stalk as a data base to help design local machine for sugarcane crop de-trashing made of local materials to overcome this problem, at the lowest cost and fit conditions of the Egyptian agriculture. To provide information that help in designing a mechanism for handling, feeding and removing sugarcane leaves, the following parameters were taken, length, diameter, the number of internode, weight of the stalks, the weight of the green top and the weight of dry and green needs removed. Also, the required force to remove cane stalks leaf beside to penetration force, cutting force and crushing force were measured. The main results in this study can be summarized as follow: The maximum length of 322 cm, and diameter 26.1 mm and the number of internode 25 and the weight of stalk 2530 g, weight of the green top was 7.93 % and dry and green leaves 7.44 % percentage to total weight of the stalks. The maximum value of penetration force were 1916 N, 1686 N and 1205 N for bottom, middle and the top a part of the stalk respectively, for the cutting force were 1030 N, 627.8 N and 382.6 N for bottom, middle and the a part of the stalk respectively. Crushing force was 1226 N, 657.3 N and 510 N for bottom, middle and the top of stalk respectively. The required force to remove the leaves from the stalk has been recorded maximum values of 6.54 kg/ leaf and 11.76 kg /leaf and 13.57 kg /leaf for bottom, middle and top a part of stalks respectively, while minimum values were 0.340, 0.685 and 7.34 kg/leaf for both the base, middle and the top a part of the stalk respectively.
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