Effect of Thresher Drum-Speed on the Quality of the Milled Rice

탈곡기의 급동 속도가 도정 손실에 미치는 영향

It is understood that drum speed of threshers and the moisture content of paddy grains to be threshed, respectively, have a signific:mt effect upon rice recoveries. Threshing under an increased drum speed would give a high performance rate, which is the general practice in custom work threshing in association with the use of semiauto-t hreshers. In the connection, however, it may result in the promotion of grain cracks and brokens of the rice product after milling. No reference or determination for an opti mum drum speed of the thresher is made available for various grain moisture contents at the time of the threshing operation and for different rice varieties especially for the Tongil rice varieties. This study was Conducted to find out and determine effects of the drum speeds on grain losses. The grain loss was quantified in terms of recovery rates of rice grains after treatments. Samples of each of all treatments were taken from the grain sampling plate placed in the grain conveyor of threshers. The grain sample plate was specially provided for this experiment. The brown-rice, milling, and head-rice recJveries were tes ted in the laboratory mill, respectively. Two rice varieties, Akibare and Suweon 251, each with five levels of different moist\ulcornerure contents at harvest and six levels of different drum speeds of threshers, were selected and used for treatments in this experiment. Two conditions of materials were tested in the thresher. One condition was to thresh the experimental material immediately after cutting, referred to as the wet-material thr eshing in this study. The other was to thresh the experimental :material, dried to contain about 15-16 percent of the grain moisture under the shocking operation. This is referred to as the dry-material threshing in this study. In additioon, field measurements for the grain moistures and drum-sdeeds under actual operation practices of the traditional field threshing, were conducted with a view to comparing with results of the experimental treatments. The results of the study may be summarized as follows: 1. For threshing treatments of Japonica-type rice variety (Akibare) , the effect of drum speeds and levels of grain moisture at cutting upon brown-rice, milling, and head-rice recoveries were found statistically significant. No significant difference in these recovery rates was noticed regardless of whether the material was threshed right after cutting or after drying by the shocking operation. 2. For the Tongil-sister rice variety(Suweon 251), milling recovery for the varied drum-speed and the grain~moisture level at cutting was found statististically significant. Th milling recovery was much significant when associated with the wet-material thres\ulcornerhing compared to the dry-material threshing. 3. The optimum peripheral velocity to be maintained at the edge of teeth on the thr\ulcorneresher drum was determined and may be recommanded as that of about 12 to 13 meters per second in view of the maximum recovery rate of the milled rice. 4. The effect of the drum speed on the qualitative loss of the milled rice was much greater in the case of the Tongil variety than Japonica. This effect was also greater by the wet-material threshing than by the dry-material threshing. Therefore, to apply the wet-material threshing operation for the Tongil variety, in particular, it should be very important to introduce the kind of threshing technology which would maintain the drum speed at optimum. 5. A field survey for the actual drum speed of threshing operations for 50 threshers indicated that average peripheral velccity was 12.76m/sec., and that the range was from 10.50 to 14.90m/sec. Approximately, more than 30% of the experimented and measured threshers were being operated at speeds which exceeded the optimum speed determined and assessed in this study. Accordingly, it should be highly desirable and important to take counter-measures against these threshing practices of operational overspeed.