| Resumo: |
This study was carried out, at Dept. of Agric. Eng., Faculty of Agric., Mansoura Univ., Egypt during 2014 spring season, to design and evaluate a cutting prototype performance and production as a date palm leaves components (fronds, leaflets and spines). The tested treatments include saw speed (167.5, 251.2, 334.9 and 418.7 rad s-1), saw teeth inner spacing (4, 5 and 8 mm) and feeding speed ratio (1:1, 1:1.25, 1:1.67 and 1:2.50). The study concluded that the optimum operation conditions of saw speed of 334.9 rad s-1, saw teeth inner spacing of 8 mm and 1:1.25 feeding speed ratio achieved cut fronds productivity of 1051.5 m h-1, cut leaflets and spines productivity of 183.86 kg h-1, cutting leaflets efficiency of 99.32%, leaflet losses of 0.68 %, frond cleaning quality of 100.03% and specific energy requirement of 0.08 kW h m-1. The research recommended that the designed machine could be used for cutting date palm leaflets in a large scale to suitable amount for process palm wood, crina, baskets, fodder, and pectin extraction.
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