Design And Research Of Pneumatic Lotus Seed Sheller

Lotus seed shelling is an important process of lotus seed processing.With therapid growth of the lotus seed production and the overseas market’s constantlyexpanding of our country,lotus seed processing industry’s demands for lotus seedshelling quality and productiong efficiency are higher and higher.The existing lotusseed shelling method,not only requries to grade lotus seeds before shelling,but alsoleads to some cut marks on the surface of lotus kernel after shelling,which seriouslyaffects the lotus kernel’s quality of appearance.To shorten the process line andimprove lotus kernel’s appearance quality,in this paper,through theoretical analysisand experimenal study,a pneumatic lotus seed shelling technology has been carriedout to research and a pneumatic lotus seed sheller has been successfullydevelopped.In this paper,the main work accomplished is as follows:(1) Experimental study on physical and mechanical characteristics of lotusseeds.Geometry size, hundred-grain weight,lotus’s moisture content,lotus shell’shardness,lotus shell’s compressive strength have been tested.The data has beendealed with mathematical statistics method,concluded that physical and mechanicalcharacteristics parameters’s regularities,which provides the basis of lotus seedshelling mechanics analysis,key institutiongs’ design and shelling experimentalresearch.(2) The design of program of pneumatic lotus seed shelling and shellinganalysis.A pneumatic lotus seed sheller has been presented,and the mechanicalanalysis of shelling process has been taken.The key forces have been determined anddeduced.The matching parameter of the pneumaticlotus seed sheller has beencalculated to provide range of parameters available for lotus seeds’s shellingexperiment.(3) The design of pneumatic lotus seed sheller and the trial-manufacture ofprinciple prototype.In this paper,the mechanical part and pneumatic system havebeen respectively designed. Mechanical parts designs includes the design of shellingworkspace,lifter mechanism design,the material design and the transmissionmechanism design.Pneumatic system design includes the pneumatic circuitdesign,selection of pneumatic components and pneumatic control programdesign.Finally the principle prototype has been trial-manufactured,and the test hasbeen done.Results showed that the pneumatic lotus seed sheller has stable performance and is suitable for various sizes of lotus seeds,and the surface of lotuskernel is good after shelling.(4) Based on the principle prototype,the lotus seed shelling experimentalresearch has been carride out.According to the shelling analysis,the factors andlevels have been selected to take an orthogonal experiment,seting hulling rate andbreakage rate as the experimental index.The extreme difference analysis and varian-ce analysis of the experiment have been made,to find out the technological parameterwhen the hulling rate was highest and the breakage rate was lowest,and to get theinfluence degree on hulling rate and breakage rate of various factors.And thatprovided optimal process parameters for further optimizing the sheller’s shellingperformance.The pneumatic lotus seed sheller developed in this paper has the charac-teristics of adaptability to different sizes of lotus seeds, meets the requirements ofdefferent sizes of lotus seeds’ shelling and eliminates the grading process,and thesurface quality of lotus kernel is better than existing equipment after shelling.