Substantiating an Electrostatic Technology for Cleaning Alfalfa Seeds from Quarantine Weed Seeds
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24160/0013-5380-2026-8-90-96Keywords:
alfalfa, seeds, quarantine weeds, electrostatic separator, critical field strength, sphericity coefficient, charge dynamics, cleaningAbstract
The article addresses matters concerned with substantiating an electrostatic technology for cleaning alfalfa seeds from difficult-to-separate quarantine weed seeds using the critical field-strength method. The existing seed-cleaning lines are analyzed, and the morphological and electrophysical separation criteria for alfalfa, bitterweed, and Johnson grass seeds are determined. The dependences for calculating the electric-field force and seed-charge dynamics are refined. The effect of electrode voltage on seed fractionation and contamination of the cleaned fraction has been checked experimentally. The calculation-and-experimental relationship between the cleaning quality, seed sphericity coefficient, electrode voltage, inter-electrode space geometry, and particle velocity in a non-uniform electrostatic field has been established. It is shown that when the electrode voltage increases from 16 to 28 kV, the contamination of the first alfalfa seed fraction with bitterweed seeds decreases from 750 to 160 seeds/kg, i.e. by more than 4.5 times, and the reduction with respect to the control material (836 seeds/kg) is about 80.9%. Engineering regression dependences have been obtained, using which it is possible to preliminarily estimate the fraction contamination in the studied voltage range. The results can be applied in designing environmentally safer seed-cleaning machines without the use of magnetic powder.
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