Evaluation of performance of upgraded DKR-1 grain hammer crusher in metered material supply mode

Abstract

Grain is one of the most important ingredients in the diets of farm animals and poultry. The reference documents regulate its preliminary proper preparation before feeding. In Russia, unlike in Europe and America, grain is crushed in crushers. In this case, grain supply is preformed either by transporting machines directly into the crushers with forced feeding, or by using rarefied air through air ducts directly from the heap. In modern feed mills, grain is stored in silos and fed to crushers through dispensers by means of conveying machines. We propose to simplify the design by excluding the transporting equipment from the chain and feeding grain from the dispenser directly into the air duct of the crusher with a fan. However, such crushers have high energy consumption, and the finished product contains a large amount of pulverized fractions. We hypothesized that these indices may be improved by upgrading the design of the crusher by performing additional discharge windows in the grated space. Therefore, the research goal is to study the effect of the area of unloading barred windows on the performance of a hammer crusher with metered material supply. The influence of the area of unloading barred windows made in the partition of the crusher separating the rotor and the fan, and designed to evacuate the crushed product from the crusher was investigated. The energy and quality indices of the crusher were determined with constant supply of barley grain through a dispenser. As a result of the conducted studies of the grain grinding process with its dosed supply in the DKR-1 crusher, it was found that the presence of discharge windows reduced energy consumption when using sieves with holes of 5 and 6 mm by 15%. By changing the area of the unloading windows, you can change the quality indices of the crushed grain. In particular, the presence of windows allows reducing the amount of dust fraction in the finished product 2 times.