Experimental study on cleaning performance of belt-type Camellia oleifera shell-seed cleaning machine

<bold>Objective</bold> To address the problems of low cleaning efficiency and high seed damage rate associated with existing camellia seed hull cleaning machinery，this sutdy designs a belt-type camellia seed hull cleaner and conducts experimental research and performance analysis on its cleaning effectiveness. <bold>Method</bold> Based on the analysis of the performance of <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> seed and <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> shells，a belt-type <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> shells-seed cleaning machine was designed，and the interaction process between the <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> shells-seed mixture and the belt cleaning mechanism was analyzed，the main influencing factors affecting the cleaning performance of the belt-type <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> shells-seed cleaning machine were determined.Taking the <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> seed cleaning rate and <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> seed impurity rate as evaluation indexes，the value range of belt inclination angle，belt speed and cover height was determined by using the single-factor test method.With the belt inclination angle，belt speed and cover height as test factors，a three-factor three-level orthogonal test was conducted.The optimal parameter combinations were obtained by multi-objective optimization solving using Optimization function software on Design-Expert software with the <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> seed cleaning rate and <italic>Camellia oleifera</italic> seed impurity rate as evaluation indexes. <bold>Result</bold> The experimental results show that the influencing order of factors affecting the camellia seed cleaning rate is belt inclination angle，cover plate height and belt speed，while the order of factors affecting the impurity rate of camellia seeds is cover plate height，belt inclination angle and belt speed.The optimal parameter combination is as follows：the belt inclination angle is 31°，the belt speed is 1.32 m/s，the cover plate height is 63 mm，corresponding to a camellia seed cleaning rate of 95.23% and an impurity rate of 3.12%. <bold>Conclusion</bold> The study demonstrates that this belt-type camellia seed hull cleaner meets the expected design objectives，can satisfactorily fulfill the requirements for post-harvest cleaning and processing of camellia fruits，and provides an experimental basis for the subsequent R&amp;D and performance optimization of the complete machine.