Design, Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of Wheat Grain Cleaner for Small-Scale Farmers

Wheat cleaner had been designed, manufactured and tested in the workshop of the department of agricultural engineering, faculty of agricultural sciences, university of Dongola, northern state of Sudan under collaboration of Alshamaliya for Agricultural Services Company, for the purpose of enhancing productivity for small-scale farmers who used to plant their saved wheat grains every season with all risk of weed infestation and low viability. The prototype of wheat cleaner consists of; the hopper, the high capacity fan, the flat screen (which is the major cleaning unit), the clean grain pan and the trash pan. The gauge of the screen is 2 mm and it is inclined 20o by jackscrew to facilitate the ease of flow of materials in the screen. The machine is operated by a 0.6 hp electric motor using a v-belt drive. The cleaning efficiencies of the machine were evaluated at two speeds of operation namely; 208 and 300 rpm. The shape and diameter of screen holes which designated according to the geometric mean diameter for tested wheat has given a very good results based on efficiency of separating clean wheat grains (ξG), efficiency of separating materials other than grains (ξMOG), total cleaning efficiency (ξT) and percentage of product purity (%Pp) which were 99.8%, 88.89%, 88.68% and 99.43% respectively, at crank speed of 208 rpm.