The article presents the main results of studies on the influence of ozone concentration in the ozone-air mixture acting as a drying agent on the efficiency of the efficiency of grain dryers of various types. The positive effect of gas on shortening the duration of the process, increasing the speed of drying, reducing energy costs, increasing the productivity of grain dryers, has been revealed. An analysis based on the results of research conducted by leading scientists in this field and our own experiments made it possible to determine the feasibility of preliminary ozonization of a wet grain heap in metal buffer storage silos before feeding it to a grain dryer. In general, the advantages of using ozone during the drying of grain material before the traditional method are revealed. Agricultural producers are recommended to equip buffer silos for temporary storage of grain with an ozonization system, which, according to preliminary studies, will reduce the moisture content of the heap by one pass through the mine dryer by up to 8.3%. At the moment, the percentage of moisture removed for one drying cycle does not exceed 6%.
Grain insect pests impact adversely on the agrarian industry. Insects make a significant portion of crops to become unusable. During storage, lacking proper monitoring and control, different pests tend to grow in grains. In the laboratory conditions, grain cereal heaps are most often infested by grain weevils and flour beetles. Since pests are growing very rapidly, it is necessary to immediately apply pest control actions. Ozonation can effectively destroy a large proportion of insects. However, the recommended ozone concentrations for disinfection are excessive and very hazardous for humans. Therefore, lower ozone concentrations should be applied for treatment. To this end, concentrations of ozone ranging from 1.4 to 5 mg/m3 with an exposure interval of 5 hours is found to be sufficient to completely exterminate the grain weevil. It is very difficult to maintain a constant dose of the used gas mixture, so one should focus on the concentration of ozone above 1.0 g·min/m3. To completely exterminate the flour beetle, it is necessary to ozonize under the given conditions for more than 8 hours. In this situation, the ozone concentration should surpass 1.8 g·min/m3. Ozonation is carried out until the death of 40… 50% of insects, the remaining part dies over the next day.
Ozonation makes it possible to disinfect the material and ensures rehabilitation of micro-damage, which increases the overall crop yield. The corresponding studies were carried out to confirm the theoretical prerequisites for the positive effects of ozonation of seed during storage. As a result, it was found that ozonation of corn seeds in grain storage silo increases their germination capacity: laboratory – by 4% and field – by 10%, relative to the control sample without any treatment. At the same time the weight of grain collected from plants which seeds were ozonized during storage exceeded the same indicator in the control sample by 13.4%, and the thousand-seed weight – by 12.8%. Ozonation of seed grain during storage allowed increasing the grain yield, equivalent to one sowing hectare at a seeding rate of 6 pcs/m – by 9.3 c/ha. Besides, the share of coarse fractions (with the diameter of more than 7 mm) in a grain heap obtained from plants grown from ozonized seeds exceeds the corresponding indicator in the control version by 7.3%.
The article presents theoretical and experimental studies on the feasibility of using the fractionation process in post-harvest grain processing. The main signs of the separation of winter wheat heap are determined. It is established that these signs of separation have a correlation. For each thickness of the grains, a certain speed of soaring in the air channel can be set, which will allow to isolate the feed fraction not only by sieves, but also by an aspiration system. The theoretical yield fractions of the main and feed fractions were determined under various conditions. It was found that when the separation on the spike and sowing sieves is 0.8 and the air flow rate in the second suction channel is 7.0 m / s, as well as the width of the sorting sieve opening is increased from 2.0 to 2.6 mm, the yield of the main fraction decreases from 0.94 to 0.75. In general, theoretical studies have shown that to obtain high-quality seeds of winter wheat, it is necessary to install sorting sieve sheets with oblong apertures of 2.6 mm in the separators and adjust the air flow velocity in the second suction channel of 7 … 8 m / cm.
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