大米分級下料裝置及其整體結(jié)構(gòu)設(shè)計,大米分級下料裝置及其整體結(jié)構(gòu)設(shè)計,大米,分級,裝置,及其,整體,總體,結(jié)構(gòu)設(shè)計 A simplified twin screw co-rotating food extruder: design, fabrication and testing S.A.M.A.N.S. Senanayake a, B. Clarke b,* Division of Agricultural and Plantation Engineering, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka Department of Postharvest Technology, School of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Silsoe Collage, Cranfield University, Silsoe, Bedfordshire MK45 4DT,UK Received 6 July 1998; accepted 10 February 1999 Abstract A simplified co-rotating twin screw food extruder was designed, fabricated and tested in England, followed by extensive testing in Sri Lanka. It was built as a model to meet the specific product and financial constraints of less developed countries and was expected to be used in those countries to widen the production capabilities of extruded foods. The machine had an estimated delivery of 10 kg/h and was made mainly with mild steel. Two types of screw were made, one with a constant pitch of 14 mm and the other with varying pitch in segments of 14, 12 and 10 mm. The machine was powered by a 2.2 kW electric motor with electronic speed control .The machine also had electrical heating with a temperature controller and a pressure sensing device. The cost of fabrication of the machine was estimated at ￡2000 with most of the parts built in a fairly simple workshop. A mixture of rice and dried banana was successfully extruded as a potential snack food and on the basis of maximum expansion the best results was obtained from a barrel temperature of 120°C, screw speed 125 rpm, feed moisture 15% and with a die orifice size of 3 mm. When the alternative compress ion screw was tested very similar results were achieved with no significant improvement in product expansion. ? 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Twin screw extruder; Design; Low cost; Snack food; Continuous cooker; Local construction; Cereal mixtures Nomenclature a Die diameter (mm) B Channel width (mm) C Screw circumference (mm) d Screw core diameter D Outer diameter of screws (mm) H Flight depth (mm) M Moisture content (% wet basis) n Number of fight turns N Speed angular (rev/min) p Pitch (mm) Q Delivery rate (mm3/min) S Total helical length of screws (mm) t Temperature (℃) T Residence time (min) a Overlap angle of screw fights (degrees) d Calender gap (mm) e Side clearance (mm) q Product density (g/mm3 ) / Helix angle (degrees) * Corresponding author. Fax: +01525-863277; e-mail: b.clarke@cran- ?eld.ac.uk 0260-8774/99/$ ± see front matter?1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 6 0 - 8 7 7 4 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 4 9 – 7 1. Introduction Extrusion cooking is finding ever increasing applications in the food process industry. Apart from providing a means of manufacturing new products, it has successfully revolution is many conventional manufacturing processes (Harlow, 1985, Frame, 1994). Today, extruders come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes and method of operation. There are three types of food extruder found in industry: hydraulic ram, roller and screw type extruders (Frame, 1994). The screw extruders are very different to the other two having special features such as continuous processing and mixing ability. Single and twin screw types are both widely used in the food process industry. Unfortunately, most of the food extruders available in the market are either so costly that less developed countries cannot afford to buy them except by some form of assistance or outside investment or else are not appropriate for the wide variety of materials that need to be processed. As a result the growth of extrusion technology of food into these countries has been hindered despite its many advantages. Fig. 2. Plan drawing of the twin screw extruder with drive system. 1-V belt pulley, 2-gear box, 3-food seal, 4-ˉange clamp bolt, 5-die plate, 6-die, 7-two segments of the extruder chamber, 8-extruder screw. were made so that they could be externally screwed to the die plate.2.5. Drive system The machine was driven by an electric motor of 2.2kW using a twin belt drive between the motor and a gearbox shown in Fig. 2. The speed reduction in the box was2.08 while an electronic speed controller was used to control the speed continuously over the range required. Fig. 3. Front portion of barrel showing provision for heaters, temperature and pressure sensors. 1-slots for heaters, 2-end flanges, 3-side flanges to barrel, 4-hole for pressure sensor, 5-twin holes to form the barrel. 2. Motor power In twin screw extruders the motor power is utilized mainly to compress and shear the food dough that squeezes through various gaps in the intermeshing screws and the gap between the screws and the barrel. When dealing with a wide range of foods under different process conditions the shear resistance can vary widely because of changes in the rheological behaviour which would prevent accurate estimate of the motor power. Owing to the unknown character therefore of the novel materials a motor power was selected based on that used for similar materials in similar sized extruders with a safety margin and from exploratory trials in the Brabender extruder. Rossen and Miller (1973) give a range of specific energy consumption figures for different extruders which ranged from 0.02 to 0.10 kWh/kg. At 10kg/h throughput this gave a maximum power requirement of 1 kW while the Brabender trials tended to indicatea power requirement of about half of this value. The 2.2 kW, 3 phase AC motor used was amply capable of supplying this power plus all other drive friction losses. 3. Gear box In the co-rotating extruder the two screw shafts are driven at the same speed in the same direction. The main problem is that they are very close together. The gearbox was designed to drive two pinions, coupled to the shafts by shear pins, by using a gear wheel of more than double the width of the pinions. In this way the two pinions could ?t side by side driven simultaneously and maximise their diameter space as shown in Fig. 2. Lubricated phosphor bronze thrust bearings were used to resist the axial load generated by the material along the shaft. 2.6. Heating and temperature control Heating of the barrel to give necessary thermal input for cooking the food was done by two sets of cartridge heaters having capacities of 800 and 1200 W. The heaters were positioned in the grooves made on the top and bottom of the barrel towards the die end as shown in Fig. 3. A single temperature controller was set up together with a thermocouple to sense the temperature inside the barrel very close to die plate. Owing to the shortness of the barrel only one thermocouple was considered necessary. In an early design heaters were also used near to the feed hopper but were not used as they tended to cause premature gelatinization of the starch and blockage of the feed. 4. Pressure sensor Pressure measurements are not so important in the commercial production processes as it cannot be directly controlled to monitor the product characteristics. Neither was such a device needed as a safety measure as this was covered by an overload cut out on the electrical supply. However, in experimental work the measurement of pressure is useful to ascertain the relationship between the pressure and the other controllable parameters such as die size, temperature, moisture content and speed. In this study, a device was built using strain gauges mounted on a small cantilever beam in order to measure the pressure inside the extruder barrel (Fig. 4). A four arm strain gauge bridge was fixed at the point of maximum bending moment. The pressure was tapped from a small hole made in the die end of the barrel in which a plunger, sealed by an O-ring, actuated the cantilever beam to transmit the pressure force. The strain in the beam was detected as a voltage difference. This feature could have been used as an automatic safety cut-out but reliance was placed instead on belt slip in the initial drive stage and the motor itself had an overheating cut-out. Fig. 4. Position of pressure and temperature sensors on the extruder barrel. 1-location of strain gauges on the pressure sensor, 2-cantilever support to plunger, 3-temperature sensor. 5. Testing and evaluation A range of rice and banana mixtures were selected as being both novel yet having high potential as processed foods in Sri Lanka. These materials are cheap and common crops in most developing countries and represent an opportunity to produce an attractive, nutritious and tasty snack food. This would provide labour, utilisation of excess perishable fruits in season and a means of storing them for at least one year in appropriate packages. The main product qualities were assessed as part of the same programme and shown to be satisfactory by Gamlath (1995). The rice was prepared in the form of grits (<800 lm) and the banana was dried and milled to a similar sized powder which was mixed and flood fed from the feed hopper. Extrusion trials were carried out as given below. Sixteen combinations of variable levels were studied in two sets of experiments. In both sets the throughput was measured when the flow became stable. Initial trials indicated no significant difference in performance due to the variable pitch screws as a means of compressing the feed so all subsequent trials and the results quoted in this paper are for the fixed pitch screws. The extrudate diameter was measured using a vernier calliper immediately after extrusion and before any further drying took place which could cause some further reduction in ratio but not to affect the general result. All tests were replicated three times making 48 individual trials carried out in a fully randomised format Experiment 1 Fixed settings: Speed (N) 125 rev/min Die size (a) 5 mm diameter Variables: Barrel temperature (t) two levels (100°C and 120°C) Feed moisture content (M) four levels (15%, 20%, 25%, 30%) Experiment 2. This experiment was carried out using fixed settings of barrel temperature and the feed moisture determined in experiment 1 on the basis that maximum product expansion represented the best quality. Fixed settings: Barrel temperature (t).120°C Feed moisture content (M).15% 6. Testing and evaluation A range of rice and banana mixtures were selected as being both novel yet having high potential as processed foods in Sri Lanka. These materials are cheap and common crops in most developing countries and represent an opportunity to produce an attractive, nutritious and tasty snack food. This would provide labour, utilisation of excess perishable fruits in season and a means of storing them for at least one year in appropriate packages. The main product qualities were assessed as part of the same programme and shown to be satisfactory by Gamlath (1995). The rice was prepared in the form of grits (<800 lm) and the banana was dried and milled to a similar sized powder which was mixed and flood fed from the feed hopper. Extrusion trials were carried out as given below. Sixteen combinations of variable levels were studied in two sets of experiments. In both sets the throughput was measured when the flow became stable. Initial trials indicated no significant difference in performance due to the variable pitch screws as a means of compressing the feed so all subsequent trials and the results quoted in this paper are for the fixed pitch screws. The extrudate diameter was measured using a vernier calliper immediately after extrusion and before any further drying took place which could cause some further reduction in ratio but not to affect the general result. All tests were replicated three times making 48 individual trials carried out in a fully randomised format Experiment 1 Fixed settings: Speed (N) 125 rev/min Die size (a) 5 mm diameter Variables: Barrel temperature (t) two levels (100°C and 120°C) Feed moisture content (M) four levels (15%, 20%, 25%, 30%) Experiment 2. This experiment was carried out using fixed settings of barrel temperature and the feed moisture determined in experiment 1 on the basis that maximum product expansion represented the best quality. Fixed settings: Barrel temperature (t).120°C Feed moisture content (M).15% Table 1 Results of Experiment 1 (Die orifice diameter=5 mm, screw speed=125 rpm) Temperature (°C) Feed moisture (%) Throughput (g/s) Expansion ratio Pressure (MN/m2) 100 15 3.76 1.01 2.97 100 20 2.56 1.00 2.38 100 25 2.04 1.00 1.83 100 30 1.25 1.00 1.38 120 15 2.16 1.06 2.91 120 20 2.00 1.05 2.07 120 25 1.18 1.01 1.59 120 30 1.02 1.00 1.38 Variables: Die orifice diameter (a) two levels (3, 4 mm) Speed (N) four levels (100, 125, 150, 175 rev/min) 4. Results and discussion 4.1. Machine performance Generally the extruder performed very satisfactorily.The extrudates produced by the machine were fairly well expanded. During extrusion operations it did not become necessary to dismantle the barrel lengthways by splitting into two halves as it never seized up. In order to clean the screw and barrel the latter barrel was very easily pulled o. from the screws within a few minutes after extrusion. This was in part due to a shorter than usual barrel length. This suggests that the horizontal splitting of the barrel was not essential which would make the machining process of the barrel far easier. No serious difficulties were encountered as far as the operation of the machine is concerned, except initial feeding problems due to a temperature rise close to the feed hopper. This happened because some heaters were installed a little too close to the feed point so these were later removed and the difficulties were overcome as mentioned earlier. Many extruders have cooling facilities in this region but these were not found to be necessary. Those heaters further from the feed point and close to the die end proved to be sufficient to gelatinize the rice grits. The extrudate was observed to change from a powder at feed to a continuous, expanded extrudate at exit although quantitative assessments of the degree of gelatinization were not carried out. 7. Extruder settings and product characteristics It can be seen from Table 1 and Fig. 5 that the throughput dropped with each increase of feed moisture content at both the barrel temperatures used. When the feed moisture was increased from 15% to 30%, the throughput was reduced by 66.8% and 52.7% at 100℃ and 120℃barrel temperatures, respectively. This effect was probably caused by an increase in backflow allowed by the reduced viscosity which the increase in moisture produced. Another important observation made was the variation of product expansion with the pressure and feed moisture content. The expansion was found to be highest at the lowest moisture content with associated highest pressures (Fig. 6) and a steady reduction in both expansion ratio and pressure as moisture content increased. The product was well gelatinised but with low expansion ratio. The second series was designed to test a wider range of parameters and if possible increase the expansion ratio which was thought to depend on the die diameter. The results of Experiments 2 are tabulated in Table 2 below. Fig. 5. Throughput as a function of feed moisture content with die diameter 5 mm and screw speed 125 rev/min. Fig. 6. Pressure and expansion ratio as a function of feed moisture content at feed moisture 15%, die diameter 5 mm and screw speed 125 rev/min Fig. 7 and Table 2 show that the throughput increased with the speed due to increased rate of material conveyance. The pressure changes with screw speed was not found to be significant. The product expansion, however, showed a downward trend with the increase of speed as evident from Fig. 8. This reduction can be attributed to the reduction of pressure and lower degree of gelatinization due to reduced residence time. At settings of 125 rpm, feed moisture 15%, temperatures 120°C, die size 3 or 4 mm diameter a very acceptable product was achieved. The overall performance of the machine was found to be quite satisfactory in achieving all the parameter settings and measurements required. Each trial only lasted a few minutes in running time which was mainly spent in reaching equilibrium conditions indicated by the temperature reading but after 48 trials no significant wear was observed even though the prototype was in mild steel. Cleaning and maintenance was quick and simple and in the event of a complete seizure of the screws the barrel could be split on this machine. The gearbox was of a bolted construction to permit modifications but future designs should be welded together. The 2.2 kW motor was found to be amply capable and most of the time it only consumed about 0.5kW. No mechanical breakdowns were experienced. The prospects for use of this design in developing countries seem to be good from these experiments. Scale up to a higher capacity would bring some difficulties as discussed by Levine (1989); Singh, Smith and Frame (1998) and Yacu (1992) and although these issues were not addressed they are not considered to be insurmountable. Fig. 7. Throughput as a function of speed with feed moisture 15% and barrel temperature 120°C. Fig. 8. Pressure and expansion ratio as a function of speed with 3 mm die size, feed moisture 15% and barrel temperature 120°C. 8. Conclusions The following conclusions were made from this study. · Simplified extruders for specialised applications can successfully be made and operated in less developed countries to process local food materials. · All components can be made in an unsophisticated workshop except gears, seals, motor, temperature sensor and heaters. · Simple machining processes such as drilling and boring can be used to produce twin holed barrels to accommodate the intermeshing screws. Horizontal splitting of the barrel is not essential in this type of machine so that fabrication of the barrel for these machines can be simple enough for developing country manufacture. · A simple construction of gear box, using straight spur gears driven by a single large gear wheel is quite adequate to run the twin screws in the same direction. · An attractive and acceptable snack food was produced from the prototype machine from mixture of cereals and fruits. References Frame, N. D. (1994). 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