Abstract:
Sugarcane leaf stripping is an important part of sugarcane harvesting. Conventionally dry leaves are removed by burning method which deteriorate quality and reduces sugar contents. In developed countries, sugarcane whole stalk harvester or sugarcane chopper harvester is used for harvesting purpose. Farmers in Pakistan have small land holdings and poor economic conditions which make difficult for them to use modern large scale machinery hence they harvest the crop manually. Labour availability during peak season is also a big issue. Keeping in view these problems a small scale sugarcane leaf stripping machine was designed, fabricated and evaluated for its performance to facilitate and solve the problem of small farmers. The machine included three different types of intake roller combinations, cleaning element, outlet rollers, power transmission system and an engine as power source. The machine was evaluated in its performance for three inlet roller combination types (C1, C2, C3), three relative velocities between intake rollers (VR1=1.3, VR2=1.7, VR3=1.9), three velocities of cleaning element (CE1=660, CE2=763, CE3=1033 rpm), three sugarcane verities (V1=US-658, V2=HSF-240 and V3=CPF-249) and two level of moisture content ( MC1=8.2 and MC2=17.6%). The results indicated that for individual effect of intake roller combination C3, velocity ratio VR2, cleaning element speed CE3, sugarcane variety V1 and moisture content level MC1 gave 82.43%, 80%,77.06%, 87.72% and 82.84% leaf cleaning efficiency respectively.
