PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A LOCALLY MACHINE FOR CHOPPING OF ONION RESIDUES

Crops residues are one of the most critical problems, which face the Egyptian farmer especially after harvesting process. The present study was carried out to evaluate of the performance efficiency of stationary threshing and separating machine of wheat crop (locally manufactured); this machine was used to cutting and chopping of onion crop residues (leafs) with the desired cutting lengths for different uses. The used machine was tested and evaluated at chopping drum speeds of 350, 450, 550 and 650 rpm and feeding rates 5, 10, 15 and 20 kg/min with two moisture contents of 11.5 and 17.6 % under air speed of 6 m/s. The results showed that; the stationary thresher machine can be successfully used for cutting and chopping of onion leafs under the following optimum conditions: 650 rpm for drum speed, 20 kg/min for feeding rate and the percentages of cutting length (less than 30 mm) were 42 and 23 % for two tested moisture contents of 17.6 and 11.5 %, respectively, also; the power consumption and specific energy requirement were found to be (14.1 and 23.9 kW) and (12.5 and 21.5 kW.h /Mg) for two tested moisture contents of 17.6 and 11.5 %, respectively. In addition to; analysis of onion leafs samples with two tested moisture contents of 17.6 and 11.5% showed that the protein contents were 10.85 and 9.97 % and fat contents were 1.75 and 6.19 %, respectively. The maximum operation costs were 86.28 LE/h and 76.48 LE /Mg.