Abstract:
Due to the bulky nature of the soybean and since it has to be harvested with the stems, the conventional threshers for maize and guinea corn cannot be used for the crop without modifications. An improved soybean thresher has been developed and its performance evaluation has also been carried out. From the results, threshing efficiency, cleaning efficiency, mechanical grain damage, scatter loss and throughput capacity of 99%, 95%, 1.01%, 2.7% and 25.5kg/hr were obtained respectively. Also from the ANOVA statistical analysis carried out, it shows that all the in-dependable variables i.e. feed rate, moisture content and speed have a significant effects on the dependable variables i.e. Threshing efficiency, cleaning efficiency, scatter loss, mechanical grain damage and throughput capacity. A comparison between the performance of the improved soybean thresher and the old IAR soybean thresher was carried out and it reveals that the difference between the cleaning efficiency of the new thresher and that of the old thresher is significant at 1% probability level. It also shows that the difference in the threshing efficiency of the new thresher with the old one is significant at 5% probability level. This means that there is an improvement in the performance of the old I.A.R soybean thresher by the improved one.
DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AN IMPROVED SOYBEAN THRESHER
