NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE WASTE SEPARATION PROCESS OF A SUNFLOWER SEED MIXTURE IN THE LIQUIDATION CHAMBER OF AN AERODYNAMIC SEPARATOR

Seed waste and debris contain 30–50 % of grain or oil impurities suitable for further use, making them a promising raw material for processing. Mechanical sorting on specialized machines is the only way to extract this valuable raw material. The aerodynamic process of separating sunflower seed mixture waste into husk, kernels, and other impurities is an important part of processing at an oil extraction plant, but the issue of incomplete separation of husk from kernels reduces processing quality and leads to food product losses. Optimizing the separation process of sunflower seed mixture waste is a relevant task. The aim of the work is to conduct numerical modeling of the process of separating sunflower seed mixture waste in the vacuum chamber of a developed aerodynamic separator and to justify its rational design and technological parameters. As a result of the first stage of numerical modeling of the separation process of sunflower seed mixture waste components in the vacuum chamber, trajectories and distributions of the components were obtained. Using Wolfram Cloud, regression equations were calculated for the dependence of the distance between the peaks of the distributions of sunflower husk and small particles (Δy`) on the effective diameter (Dp), feed rate of components (Vp), and curvature radius of the upper edge of the vacuum chamber (R). It was found that with Dp = 0.01 m, Va = 3.35 m/s, R = 0.054 m, the average distance between the peaks of the husk and small particles distributions is Δy` = 0.443 m. In the Simcenter Star-CCM+ model, the rational value for the intersection point of the mixture component distributions (y`int) was obtained as 0.43 m. At the second stage of modeling the separation process in a column-type aerodynamic separator, regression equations for the separation coefficient (δ) were calculated based on the content of components in the seed mixture (ψh, ψd, ψk), feed rate (q), and airflow velocity (Va). Rational values of factors were established to ensure high separation quality with sufficient productivity and reduced energy consumption: q = 133 kg/h, Va = 2.46 m/s, with the separation coefficient δ = 0.92.