Design Of Screw For Grading Of Lotus Seed And Research On Key Processing Parameters

Lotus seed is rich in protein, fat, mineral elements and so on, which is used as an important herbal medicine and health care. With the development of people's living standard and health consciousness, the needs of lotus seed is increaseing annually. Therefore, the higher standard is required in the production and process. However, factors such as little clearance between shell and kernel, variety in breed, diversity in size and irregularity in shape enhance the difficulties of cracking shell and fetching kernel. The existing decladding equipment can't adjust incision force according to the hardness of shell, which leads to the imperfect situation in which flesh lotus seed can be cut easily and dry lotus seed can't be cut. The cracking operation will lead to damaged and broken kernels.After investigating the native and foreign research on the material characteristics and nuts hulling technology , we determined the experimental scheme of studying the physical size of lotus seeds by measuring and calculating the longitudinal diameter, horizontal diameter and edging diameter of dry lotus seeds. Some statistical results on the size of dry lotus seeds are obtained. We also analysed that how the physical parameters of lotus seeds will influence the grading efficiency. The conclusion on the features of lotus seeds grading is presented. These results are of important reference value in the design of lotus seeds grading equipment.In order to see the effect of grading of lotus of the prototype, taking the grading accuracy and production as the experimental index, taking the setting of frequency modulator (A), the steering (B), the thread number(C)as the factors, we arranged L9 (3⁴) orthogonal experiment and analyzed the influence of the factors above to the grading effect. The results indicated that in the grading accuracy case, the best combination of factors is A₁B₂C₁, namely when the rotate speed of screw is 84r/min, and the steering of screw is "the steering II", and the lead angle is 4.915°. In the production case, the best combination of factors is A3B1C3, namely when the rotate speed of screw is 196r/min, and the steering of screw is "the steering I", and the lead angle is 14.413°.Conclusions of this paper will be important reference value for the further research and application of lotus seed grading.