Tag Archives: Caucasian goat‘s rue

405-413 E. Vaiciukevičius, A. Sakalauskas, E. Šarauskis, R. Domeika and V. Butkus
The cleaning of caucasian goat’s rue chaff in the combine harvester cleaner
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The cleaning of caucasian goat’s rue chaff in the combine harvester cleaner

E. Vaiciukevičius, A. Sakalauskas, E. Šarauskis, R. Domeika and V. Butkus

Department of Agricultural Machinery, Lithuanian University of Agriculture,Studentu Str. 15A, LT-53361 Kaunas r., Lithuania; e-mail: ZUM.katedra@lzuu.lt

Abstract:

Caucasian goat‘s rue (Galega orientalis L.) is perennial grass which can be harvested as green mass and as seeds. The expansion of grasses with small seeds, such as Caucasian goat‘s rue has been stopped because of unsolved problems of yield processing and seed preparation in Lithuania.Caucasian goat‘s rue grass is usually harvested in the second half of July when the grassstems are still green and comprise about 43%. The pods of Caucasian goat‘s rue grass are in the top part of the plant. When the weather is windy the small amount of the pods are broken off the stem. The pod does not open by itself. Therefore, it is very important to duly adjust the threshing apparatus of the combine harvester to thresh all the seeds from the pods. The seed cleaning from the moist chaff of the green mass in the cleaner of the combine harvester is rather problematic because of significant seed losses.The agro-engineering of Caucasian goat‘s rue grasses has been investigated since1985.The yield harvesting losses exceed the permissible limit by 2–3 times. The greatest seed losses during the harvesting occur in the cleaner of the combine harvester. Thus the cleaning of the chaff of Caucasian goat‘s rue plants is a topical and acute issue that needs thorough investigation. The main research object is the separation of Caucasian goat‘s rue grasses through the upper sieve of the combine harvester cleaner: our paper describes our test results, which.largely depend on the cleaner load, the oblique air flow rate in cascades, and the gaps between the upper sieve openings.Tests show that 1.5 kg·(s·m)-1 of Caucasian goat‘s rue chaff can be fed into a combineharvester cleaner. At the air flow rate of 5 m·s-1 approximately 62.2% of the seeds are separated through the upper sieve in openings at the beginning of the upper sieve, resulting in seed separation losses of about 5%. When Caucasian goat‘s rue chaff is cleaned, 6 mm gaps should be left in upper sieve openings.

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